…from a Poynter article, Commercial Appeal’s e-edition Leads to 40 Percent Circulation Increase, “[using the E-Edition in NIE] trains younger readers to grow accustomed to reading a digital replica of the newspaper as opposed to just reading the paper’s stories online.”
Reading this followed my discovery of the Kankakee Daily Journal’s site, which allows comments on the two or three grafs of articles they provide online — the rest of the word-based news is tucked behind the pay e-edition wall.
I’m asking myself: Is PDF-style delivery really the future of newspapers? The e-edition PDFs are attractive to newspapers — they look like the print edition, and they contribute to print-circ numbers. But they also ignore the possibilities of online advertising, which is a glaring problem with many newspaper-dot-coms.
Popularity: unranked [?]
Hi Joe. I think saying e-editions are “the future of newspapers” is a little overblown, although I do think e-editions can help a paper’s bottom line. I worked with Roger Fidler here at the Missouri School of Journalism on an e-edition project for a couple years, and still keep in touch with him. We do have an ongoing digitial publishing effort here; you can get some more details here: http://rji.missouri.edu/projects/e-reader/index.php
Bottom line, I think an electronic PDF edition can bridge the gap between people who don’t get or can’t get the print edition and also don’t like reading it online. It’s not something that’s a silver bullet, but I think it can be part of a media mix.
Hi Rob,
I agree with you — future silver bullet-speak is over-the-top.
I hope newspapers look at their e-editions as a bridge, and not as their primary product.
From what I’ve seen in Denver there’s a good amount of promotion of the e-edition, but not much education about what “e-edition” actually means, which leads to repeated confusion about whether you have to pay to get on to http://www.denverpost.com/ .
-Joe