Can Tablet PCs Bring Life Back Into Newspaper-Style Reading?
During a presentation in front of the Federal Trade Commission yesterday, Google’s Chief Economist painted a picture of a newspaper industry whose demise was caused by a number of sources, not just the Internet. That goes contrary to what newspaper executives have been saying for some time: that the Internet and, in particular, news aggregators like Google have been giving away content that newspapers used to be able to charge for – both in subscriptions and ad revenue. In a blog post, economist Hal Varian explained that his testimony is part of the FTC’s exploration of the future of the news industry. It’s the same old song-and-dance in that blog post and in Varian’s statements in Washington today: Newspaper readers gave up dead-tree versions of yesterday’s news and replaced it with a web browser that offered real-time, around-the-clock news with the click of a mouse. Blah blah blah. We’ve heard it all before. But, if you’re truly interested, the blog post offers a lot of statistics o
