Roger Fidler has been a new media pioneer since the 1970s. In 2004, be became the Reynolds Journalism Institute’s first fellow. He’s now RJI’s program director for digital publishing.Fidler was a journalist and newspaper designer for 34 years. He served as director of new media for Knight-Ridder in the early 1990s. In 1991, he created the first e-reader prototype while he was a Freedom Forum Media Studies Fellow at Columbia University.
Fidler went on to teach at Kent State University’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication from 1996-2004.
Read his full bio.
De Telegraff
De Telegraf is the largest Dutch morning newspaper. It's daily circulation is around 800,000. The paper is only published in Dutch.
Roger Fidler program director for digital publishing at the Reynolds Journalism Institute was contacted for an interview on E-Readers. The question and answer session from De Telegraf is printed below:
How many customers have a subscription on a newspaper through an e-reader in the US? And in the world?Amazon and the other e-reader companies have not made that data public. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal probably each have more 30,000 subscribers on the Amazon Kindle. Other newspapers have significantly fewer.
How much better does an e-reader have to be for people to totally exept it and use it in great quatities?
The current generation of e-readers with 6-inch or smaller black-and-white electronic paper displays are adequate for books. To be popular for reading electronic newspapers and magazines, e-readers and tablets will need 8-inch to 10-inch [letter-size] full-color displays. They’ll also need to display visually rich, multi-column formats and support interactivity.
Can it be the end of the problems in which a lot of publishers are (high costs, less subscriptions and advertisement)?
E-reader and tablet editions can significantly reduce production and distribution costs for publishers, but to be successful they will need significant revenue streams from subscriptions and advertising.
Are there publishers not working on this, and who is way ahead?
Most major U.S. newspaper and magazine publishers are now working with e-reader companies (and now Apple) to provide electronic editions. To my knowledge, now of the U.S. publishers is interested in being in the hardware manufacturing or reselling business.
What do the publishers have to do in order to make the e-reader a success?
They need to focus on letter-size e-readers and tablets that can support visually rich, multi-column formats. They also need to re-evaluate the “package” of news and information they offer. Advertising will be critical to the success of e-reader and tablet editions.
Will the tablet/ e-reader change journalism?
I don’t believe editions developed for e-readers and tablets will change the basic tenets of journalism. However, the form of journalistic story telling will evolve as it has every time a new medium has been introduced.
Who will benefit most, the content provider, the hard ware maker or parties like Amazon/Apple?
Ideally, the widespread adoption of e-readers and/or tablets will be a win-win for everyone.
You started talking about this in 1992, how did people react then?
Actually, I started talking and writing about portable reading devices and digital newspapers in 1981. I created several mockups and demos in the 1980s and early 1990s that I presented at newspaper conferences around the world. Initially, my vision was greeted with skepticism. Many of my colleagues told me it was a crazy idea that would never happen in their lifetimes. However, by 1992 my ideas were being taken seriously by publishers. I always believed that the development of technologies required for a thin, lightweight, low-power, affordable, letter-size reading device would not emerge until the first decade of the 21st century. In my book, “Mediamorphosis: Understanding New Media”, published by Sage in 1997, I predicted that e-reading devices [e-readers and/or tablets] and digital newspapers would be commonplace by 2010. Looks like my predictions was not too far off.
What can you say in general about the attitudes of publishers towards new things?
Change has always been difficult for publishers of established newspapers and magazines. Their main motivations for change have usually been based on perceived threats or declining profits.
Have you seen the demo of Time with Sports Illustrated? Is that the future? How long will it be before that is a fact?
I’ve seen the demo. It might be the future for some magazines, but it would require a large investment in creative talent. Daily newspaper presentations of e-readers and tablets will be far more modest.
Will Apple dominate this sector?
Apple is certain to set the standard for tablet devices and will have a major influence on the development and adoption of e-readers.
Do you agree that the e-reader will provide with very valuable information of the users for advertisers?
The current generation of e-reader editions are more like printed editions. They do not have the ability to monitor the actions of readers in the way that Web sites tracks these actions. It is too early to know if the newspaper and magazine apps developed for the Apple iPad will provide more Web-like metrics.
Should publishers stop with their free websites in order to make the e-reader a success?
For many reasons, I would like to see publishers stop giving away all of their content for free on the Web. Most publishers are now considering some kind of pay wall for their Web sites. The adoption of subscription-based e-reader/tablet (iPad) editions may push publishers to give away less of their content for free on the Web.