Silicon Alley Insider has found that printing the New York Times costs twice as much as if the company gave every subscriber an Amazon Kindle using some rough numbers and elementary math. Obviously, not everyone likes the Kindle and cutting out the distribution of the NYT would eliminate thousands of jobs, but it clearly shows how digital is killing the print star. The transition to a digital print medium will not be complete until the next generation though as many baby boomers – and their parents – have trouble with GPSs and cell phones. So no matter how much it costs to keep killing trees, the practice will continue for their sake alone.
by
Matt Burns
on
January 31, 2009
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I’m a bit confused as to why people consider a $350.00 ebook reader like the Amazon Kindle a good investment? Why not just buy a $350.00 netbook like the MSI wind and own a full featured mini laptop that not only gives you a high resolution color screen, but also a less clunky design and MANY additional features for the same price!
Please New York Times, send me an MSI Wind instead of the Kindle!!! I’d even pay a higher subscription price if you do!!
Because the screen on the Kindle is better for reading text with. Have you used one?
Exactly, the screen is better for reading. The bigger benefit I see is that it’s a device with a single purpose – reading.
If my laptop gets a virus, runs out of power, etc., that won’t stop me from being able to read my books.
” cutting out the distribution of the NYT would eliminate thousands of jobs”
True, but it would probably create a lot of jobs to manufacture those jobs as well. Those might end up in another country though, which would mean that they would be out of jobs.
That could be dealt with if we were working on our national deficit in ways like Buffett talks about: http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/growing.pdf
Unless the costs are for the papers delivered to subscribers only (and not to news stands) or cost is divided by the number of papers delivered (not the number of subscribers), then these numbers are just useless trivia, regardless of their accuracy.
NYT doesn’t just sell papers to subscribers.