02-09-2009, 04:58 PM
I understand, and I'm guessing a netbook would still be too big (although I dunno, that Kindle doesn't exactly seem super-tiny either?)
I can speak to the other issue, of hardcopy that typically has more content than various "online editions." Archiving a major daily is what I do, and production and publication is largely geared to only outputting hardcopy (i.e. the newspaper.) What online stories DO exist are often the result of workarounds from that.
I haven't seen NYT's electronic version I linked to but it's my guess the reason why it's complete is because it stems from PDFs that are automatically generated from the newspaper's pagination system, and from there it's relatively simple to turn each page into jpegs or a series of searchable images.
Doing so additionally resolves a legal issue, which is that for non-staff, non-freelance content, news organizations don't typically have the full rights to publish the other (syndicated content) online. But if it exists as a result of the print archiving process, or is presented in such a way that prevents text copying (like when you turn a PDF into a jpeg) then it becomes easier.
I can speak to the other issue, of hardcopy that typically has more content than various "online editions." Archiving a major daily is what I do, and production and publication is largely geared to only outputting hardcopy (i.e. the newspaper.) What online stories DO exist are often the result of workarounds from that.
I haven't seen NYT's electronic version I linked to but it's my guess the reason why it's complete is because it stems from PDFs that are automatically generated from the newspaper's pagination system, and from there it's relatively simple to turn each page into jpegs or a series of searchable images.
Doing so additionally resolves a legal issue, which is that for non-staff, non-freelance content, news organizations don't typically have the full rights to publish the other (syndicated content) online. But if it exists as a result of the print archiving process, or is presented in such a way that prevents text copying (like when you turn a PDF into a jpeg) then it becomes easier.