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.
Apple's New Tablet? Been There, Done That
January 8, 2010By Bryan Monroe, The Huffington Post
Sixteen years ago, in a small office in Boulder, Colo., Roger Fidler was at the top of the newspaper technology world. Behind him was an original Apple Macintosh Duo laptop fitted neatly into its dock, and a Radius Pivot 15" monitor oriented in its signature vertical position.
And sitting on his desk, next to his cup of coffee and stack of manila folders, was a prototype of a thin - about an inch thick - electronic tablet that was poised to revolutionize the print media.
The device, slightly larger than an inter-office envelope, would show text, graphics, sound and video - in color - would fit in your purse or under your arm, would be powered by a rechargeable battery and magically connect to other information sources. Sound familiar?
That was 1994. Long before Amazon's Kindle or HP's Slate or Sony's Digital Reader or Hearst's Skiff. Long before Apple's rumored tablet device likely to be unveiled this month at an invitation-only event in San Francisco.
Fidler was in charge of The Information Design Lab, tasked to create innovative solutions for a now-defunct media company called Knight Ridder. At the time they owned more than 30 newspapers around the country - including the Miami Herald, Philadelphia Inquirer and San Jose Mercury News - and used to run a handful of TV stations and cable outlets. (Full disclosure: In a previous life, I was a top editor in San Jose and assistant VP/News at Knight Ridder before it was sold in 2006.)
This was in the heyday of the newspaper business. Big metro papers were throwing off profit margins of 20 and 30 percent. Bureaus in London, Tokyo and Johannesburg were commonplace. Few expected those good times would end anytime soon, although a handful of us knew that technology around the corner could change our lives forever.
Fidler, who also was part of an early videotext experiment in the '80s called Viewtron, said that the newspaper business was on the verge of a major revolution, what he called a "Media-morphosis."
"All forms of media that we know today will be transformed over the next 10-15 years," he said in a promotional video for the device back then, as models wearing shoulder pads under their mustard-colored outfits and news stories about Bosnia were the reference points of the day.
Read the complete article here.
Article courtesy of The Huffington Post.