Kindle + New York Times newspaper = yay or nay?

[3d]

How is the newspaper reading experience on a Kindle? With the announcement of the Kindle2.0 i might be in for one if reading newspaper articles on it is decent. I want full articles in their entirety. ALL articles including the local stuff...

Any first-hand experiences out there?

[Michael]

No experience with a Kindle, but a Fortune article that I read last night pointed out others are on the way.

Here's a link to the article (the hard copy article had more info than this does):
http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/06/technolo...2009020910

Here's one of the products mentioned in the hard copy (another picture of it is on the right side of the Kindle article): http://techland.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/20...fantastic/

[deckeda]

There's also this product, which doesn't require Kindle, https://www.nytimesee.com/offer.php?id=15&MediaCode=Internal&CampaignName=nytimes#trial

[3d]

Hot new products in this genre may be on the way but it's the user interface and publisher/newspaper acceptance and adoptation that will make or break any device.

"Here's a link to the article (the hard copy article had more info than this does):..."

This is exactly what i don't want. Isn't it backwards when the hardcopy article has more info than the online article?? I would love to be able to read a newspaper on the Kindle that has the same exact content (or MORE) than the printed version. It'll wirelessly download to the Kindle every morning at 6am. And I can read my tabloids and NYT on my commute to work. I would gladly pay $30 a month for that NYT service. $10 a month for a tabloid newspaper like The New York Post.

[3d]

deckeda wrote:
There's also this product, which doesn't require Kindle, https://www.nytimesee.com/offer.php?id=15&MediaCode=Internal&CampaignName=nytimes#trial

Yeah. That's EXACTLY the content i would love to have but on the Kindle. There's no way i'm lugging around a laptop on the train or plane to read the newspaper. Commuters need something that is light and small enough that it is manageable with one hand.

[deckeda]

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.

[deckeda]

Regarding Kindle, I'm also guessing a balance was struck between cost and content, with Kindle service costing less than that other thing I linked to (but again, I don't know.)

The other thing is that if Kindle doesn't do graphics or photos well, or would cause download or bandwidth issues, that's another reason why some pages or content is intentionally withheld from it.

[mattkime]

>>Any first-hand experiences out there?

we have one in the office. its hard to explain to people how much better the display is for doing large amounts of reading over a regular computer screen.

[TiUser]

I have the Kindle and tried subscribing to NYT, LA Times, The Nation etc., especially when I am traveling and don't have my computer with me or there's no internet access. While I have no problem reading articles on the Kindle, the navigation is not very intuitive. To get to an article, you need to click and scroll a number of times. Unlike on a web page where you just click the link. There's also very few images (for obvious reasons mentioned above). What I do like is the automatic delivery via Whispernet. I wake up in the morning and the newspaper is already there. Very nice. The version 2, from what I have gleaned so far, seems to display newspaper better and the controls have changed so it should be more intuitive. I do have an iPhone and I prefer the Kindle for novels and longer articles.

[3d]

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.