We all knew this would happen sooner or later. Customized newspapers written by your favourite reporters in your favourite paper about your favourite topics, printed by you at home. All using cool technology. According to the New York Times, MediaNews Group will test the customized papers in Los Angeles this summer. Although many bloggers and journalists are critical, MediaNews is confident in their experiment.
But MediaNews’s experiment, which it has named “individuated news” — it has trademarked the phrase — or “I-news,” for short, has an old media twist: dead trees and a new piece of hardware for your home.
“I-News is really about choice,” said Peter R. Vandevanter, vice president for targeted products at MediaNews. “We’ll let the reader decide what they want to read and on what platform.”
MediaNews has been working with a technology company — Mr. Vandevanter would not say which one — to develop a proprietary printer for a reader’s home. It would receive and print a subscriber’s customized newspaper — with targeted advertising.
It's kind of like taking your favourite section in the paper and only priting out that section that day.
“What we’re really talking about is moving individualization, which has been resident online, to print,” he added.
In a sense it's sort of like the printed blog, but not. Do you think this wil bring readership back?
Victoria Revay
Like many, freelance journalist, Victoria Revay is ambitious and adventurous by nature. Since leaving television news, Victoria has worked for Nowpublic.com, she has been published in Western Living Magazine, Blackbook Magazine’s Jet Set Travel Guide, Western Living Condo and Travelmuse.com, and she’s hosted an online entertainment show. She...[more]
