02-09-2009, 05:35 PM
deckeda wrote:
...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.
Ahh.. good insight. Thanks.
Reading the NYT as onscreen PDFs/JPGs on a Kindle size screen can be a major PITA. I gotta zoom in on the part of the PDF that contains the article.. then i read and scroll down only to find that the article continues on page A22. Then i gotta go to page A22 and try to find the part of the PDF/JPG that has the continued article. AckkK! No thanks.
From what i've read so far, it seems that the NYT on the Kindle is pretty robust but far from complete. It annoys me to no end when I find that the online article i'm reading is EDITED. Or someone will reference an interesting article in today's paper and i'm left scratching my head... what article?! I didn't see that one this morning. And they'll come by with a xerox'd copy of the article for me.
The legal issues over the reproduction of AP articles in the newspaper is something I haven't considered. But if this is a service I'm willing to PAY FOR i hope they can come to some solution in the near future.