New Hope for Electronic Newspapers

(MoneyWatch)  For years, newspaper publishers have been anticipating the emergence of a portable electronic devise that could speed up the transition from print to digital in ways that might help their industry to survive.

Several products have shown some promise -- the Kindle from Amazon and the eReader from Sony, among a handful of others -- but these were developed with books, not newspapers in mind. Plenty of newspapers, including the New York Times, have electronic versions available via subscription on the Kindle, but there has not yet been any large movement of users drawn to that option.

Today, Plastic Logic announced a new product (that so far is unnamed) that may prove to be a game-changer. This reader is two-and-a half times larger than the Kindle, and is only about a third as thick. It weighs two ounces more. It has a wireless link and enough space for "hundreds" of newspaper articles.

The new reader, which is roughly the size of a piece of copy machine paper, can be programmed to replicate some of the look and feel of a newspaper -- something the smaller devices cannot provide.

On the other hand, I'm not so sure that the look and feel of a newspaper is what publishers should be seeking. We had a word for that in the Web 1.0 days -- shovel-ware. My recommendation, should anyone ask, is to optimize design for easy navigation and use, and forget about that old print look.

Design decisions aside, the idea of a light-weight portable devise that would constantly update with the latest news headlines and related content may bring the era of e-newspapers within sight. The Plastic Logic reader will not be released until sometime next year; besides naming it, the company still has to price it.

Still, today's announcement is notable in that it will once again raise newspaper execs' hopes at a time when most other business indicators are headed south.