Newspaper Essentials for the iPad

January 26, 2010 By 2 Comments

Though I will be perfectly happy to run current and enhanced applications on a new Apple tablet device with a higher-resolution, 10-inch color screen that will read multiple finger swipes and be tethered to the Internet, like many of my ilk, I will be most interested in its impact on journalism – more specifically, the newspaper industry. Coupled with the iTunes retailing environment, the iPad, should enable newspapers to easily and more reliable charge for content. But it will be up to the print-publishing industry (lets include magazines) to generate the kind of compelling content for which digital-generation consumers will pay.

One imagined version of the Apple tablet

I’ve tried out many of the newspaper and magazine readers for the iPhone and have to say The New York Times comes closest to getting it right. It is fast, and intuitive to navigate (via headlines and categories), updates as news breaks and includes images. Stupidly, almost no other newspaper does the latter. I travel considerably and consume newspapers religiously. I cannot tell you how many “photo projects” I’ve seen in recent months that lost their impact because the photos were published out of register (color plates are not lined up, producing a “ghosting” effect). The Internet is where photos go and can be viewed at their heavenly best.

I hope it goes almost without saying that newspapers on an iPad must constantly be updated. Gone are the days when one, two or three editions of a paper and published and the day is done. Because of the Web, news cycles now are 24/7. This would be a starting point for me to even consider installing a newspaper app – for free – on my new device. Otherwise, I’m happy with the NYT (I’m a print subscriber which probably means I will be grandfathered into any new, digital offerings) and excellent news apps from the Associated Press, CNN and National Public Radio (NPR).
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Print’s Comeback, Dressed in a Swim Suit

December 9, 2009 By 11 Comments

I recently reached the 10th anniversary of my leaving print journalism for the Web and, in reflecting upon some of the personal developments during that decade, I noted with some remorse my separation from one of my childhood loves — my subscription to Sports Illustrated. As a sports junkie and participant, plus a budding sportswriter, SI was my Bible. However, with the proliferation of instant score gratification and sports analysis on the Web, SI’s weekly format and in-depth, albeit well-crafted, prose no longer fit into my what’s-happening-this-millisecond lifestyle.

But, like the ugly high-school duckling who shows up to the reunion as the swan you wish you’d asked to the prom, SI is poised for a dramatic return — more beautiful, hip and engaging than ever.

C’mon, admit it, if you’re like me, you want this badly. Real badly.
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A post-P-I, PostGlobe Misstep

April 28, 2009 By 2 Comments

The relationship between reporters and editors often is about as smooth and stable as a ride on Splash Mountain. A lot of reporters tend to regard editors as people who attend meetings, place casual utterances onto a budget and ask for stories never truly envisioned, or ruin the “voice” in a story, among other things. Editors generally are, through the eyes of many reporters, nuisances or do-nothings — or both.

Pieces still missing.

Pieces still missing.

Having occupied both seats (including both seats simultaneously as I do now), I understand why, given their release by Hearst and about a year’s pay in severance, several former reporters from the now-defunct print version of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (P-I) banded together and created their version of journalism Nirvana — a vision of news without the filter of editors imprisoned in ivory towers. It’s like cutting out middle management in, say, the Army, allowing the men and women on the ground to fight each battle without the interference of the generals. Who knows better than the soliders in the trenches, after all?

With my reporter’s hat on, I cry, “Woo Hoo!” But, my editor’s or consumer’s hat pulled tightly over my eyes, I whisper, “Disaster … “
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Seattlepi.com’s Ghost Town

March 18, 2009 By 3 Comments

200px-the-omega-man-posterThose eager for Hearst’s splashy debut of its great online experiment, seattlepi.com, are in for a big letdown. It’s Wednesday, March 18, the first day of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s digital age, and the Web site looks, well, like everyone who wasn’t staying packed up and left, and the few who were coming back are still hung over from the Monday-Tuesday wake. The content model appears to be: We’re making this up as we go along.

I was going to lean on my nearly three decades of experience as a sportswriter, columnist and editor, both print and online, to offer some insights on how seattlepi.com was going to approach sports. Clicking on the “Sports” section from the main navigation bar is like being transformed into Robert Neville, the Charlton Heston character in “The Omega Man” (or Will Smith in “I Am Legend,” for you more contemporary fans of post-apocalyptic movie fare). The place is a ghost town and you know there are digital mutants lurking about, but they have yet to reveal themselves.

The lead and only story on the Sports page is a remnant from the day before, ”Can the ‘Zags Go All the Way?”. Thank goodness, there are TV/radio listings, but, oops, they are from Monday, March 16, and Tuesday, March 17, as if sports on the airwaves died along with the P-I print edition.

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The Place and People I Hated to Love

March 17, 2009 By 2 Comments

For a good 12 out of my 17 years at The Seattle Times, I felt total hatred for our arch-enemies, the Post-Intelligencer. It was, I admit, my way of generating the competitive juices to engage in the daily dance of newspaper journalism and, I understand, it is not rare for the industry. I took that competitive hatred to new levels, however, generally refusing to socialize with my colleagues on the road, the way it was done in city after city across the country.

P-I's Go 2 Guy

P-I's Go 2 Guy

The five-year gap in my streak of “total hatred” for the opposition is the fault of Jim Moore, today one of my dearest friends and the “Go 2 Guy” columnist for the dearly departed P-I and now the renewed digital version, seattlepi.com. I fully intended to hate Jim, as I had his predecessors Kenneth Richardson, Carter Cromwell and Art Thiel. But anyone who has met him will agree that he is one of mankind’s thoroughly un-hatable members. He is the way he comes off in his column — an irreverent, say-first, think-later, life-loving carouser with a heart of gold and the quickest of any person I’ve ever met to explode with laughter and force you to do the same.

If Jim’s colleagues were people I loved to hate, he was the exception that I hated to love.

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