iPad: Killer of Newspapers

Two articles about tablet surveys were in my rss feeds yesterday that are perfect points for a post I have been wanting to make: Tablets are actually more a threat than a potential savior for newspapers.  Or any other traditional publication or program for that matter.

Article 1: AdAge reported that a survey of magazine newspaper apps found that quality had strongest correlation to revenue. 

Article 2: Per Nielsen, people use tablets while watching TV.

While both surveys discovered seemingly obvious results, the larger trend is both interesting and up for interpretation.  As an iPad owner for almost a year, I have observed the same behavior.  In other words, I do like to plop down on the couch and email, read, or play games while watching something on television.  There is starting to be a lot of discussion about the emerging second screen market, but at the moment I am consuming different content on the device than is playing on the television.  (I guess my demand is elastic afterall.)

The first survey that quality is important is both obvious and true.  The device in my hands contains almost infinite choices of content, it's almost a perfect market in itself.  While I have found myself trying more magazines and news apps on the iPad than I had been reading in print, my patience with them is very low.  If the content and experience is not good, unique, or providing any relevant value to me I move on to another place with the slightest flick of a finger.

So this is why newspapers or any publication is at risk.  I used to sit down on the couch with a periodical and as I was a momentary captive audience I would look at most of the different stories in each edition.  But now I will only read (or watch) the components that are relevant to me, and the best among all of the options.

Case in point: I have my local newspaper app on my iPad.  I look at it regularly as well as the website, which has more content.  But I only look for local news.  Maybe I scan headlines for breaking national news, but I reserve my attention on those topics for other national publications that I prefer that I can now easily read.  I did not have many print magazine subscriptions before, I would never read enough to justify. But now I can read in a single sitting individual articles from The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Economist, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, ESPN publications, as well as lots of blogs and other new sources when I would have previously focused on a single publication.  It is pigeonholing each publication to only its most unique and valuable content.

A related activity to this story is the role of content discovery. How do I choose to read those individual articles from different sources?

It used to be we relied on editors at our chosen publications to pick out topics and articles for us to read.  Like many, I used to love sitting at a coffee shop with the Sunday New York Times and discovering great, interesting, and important stories all contained in one place.  Now that discovery process is being replaced by various feeds from aggregators, social networks, and so-called "curators."  There is a lot of creative innovation in this area right now.  One particularly interesting experience is the custom magazines, of which there are several on the market.  I have been using Zite (recently purchased by CNN) for a few months now, allowing it to learn about my reading habits and interests by feeding my rss and social streams and then manually telling it which topics and sources I like, while it presumably keeps track and learns from which stories I click on and if I stay long enough to read the entire article.  Ignoring the privacy implications for the moment, I have to admit that this has been a rewarding experience as I the percentage of valuable content from a variety of new sources is very high.  I have found new magazines, blogs, and writers that I enjoy as well as new topics of interest.

Privacy implications and the question of seeking self-reinforcing ideas are critical questions that need to be addressed here.

Side note: As I was finishing this post I found this article in the LA Times about newspapers looking to tablets as a new business model, but from an integrated hardware opportunity.  My argument above has been that the tablet user experience will further pigeonhole newspapers as local content sources, and I don't think that will change even if they distribute hardware as the Philadelphia tablet has been described.  (I have tried the Philly device.)  The hardware opportunity is an entirely different question, but it starts with competitive positioning against all other hardware providers.  More to say on that later.