E-readers won't save newspapers

Cover stories in The Atlantic and Newsweek tout the new Apple iPad, which went on sale Saturday. I've written before about the iPad, but that was before Apple's latest product went on sale and before it got such great exposure in the mainstream press. Like other Apple products, the iPad is a great leap ahead of the competition. Other manufacturers have tried their hand at slate computers, but none have caught on. The iPad might catch on as a platform for Web browsing, but the Apple iPhone and other "smart" phones also do a pretty good job of Web browsing, albeit on a much smaller screen.

What intrigues many analysts is the iPad's potential as an electronic reader to compete with Amazon's Kindle. Each product has its advantages and disadvantages — the Kindle is better in sunlight, but the iPad allows full-color illustrations. Some magazines and newspapers have signed up subscribers to their iPad versions of their publications. In this sense, the iPad is the fulfillment of that pie-in-the-sky dream from when I was in journalism school 40 years ago — a device that would automatically deliver the day's news to subscribers without the expense of massive presses and newspaper carriers. (What many of these dreamers had in mind at that time was closer to a fax machine than to an electronic reader.) That pipe dream from long ago is now possible and practical with the iPad or the Kindle — you can get your complete newspaper each day on a small, portable electronic device.

But, as analysts have pointed out, it will take a lot of online subscriptions to make up for the print industry's loss of advertising. Traditionally in the newspaper business, circulation revenue barely covered the costs of delivery. Eighty percent or more of a newspaper's revenue came from print advertising. Even if consumers are willing to pay premium rates for the convenience of electronic delivery of news, their e-circulation payments will not replace the lost ad revenues. If newspapers are going to survive in some form, then some way must be found to lure advertisers back into the newspaper format. Subscription revenue, whether print or online, cannot replace ad sales, which provide the overwhelming bulk of total newspaper revenue. So it's unlikely the iPad, no matter how wonderful it is, will be the savior of the newspaper business.

Besides, a majority of readers say they prefer he experience of reading a book in print, the old fashioned way. This is a process — ink on paper — that has survived in some form for thousands of years. Many people enjoy reading a book who will not enjoy reading items, including this blog post, off of a computer screen. No matter how ingenious the technology is (iPad readers "flip" the pages with a brush of a finger, just as they do with a book), no electronic device can fully replicate the experience of holding a book, carrying it to secret hiding places and immersing one's self inside the cover of that book. Just as movies did not eliminate the novel, and television did not eliminate radio or the movies, e-readers will not eliminate traditional books, magazines and newspapers. If print publications die, it will because they could not generate enough advertising revenue to support news reporting, not because of the new e-readers.