“This,” he said, “is the most thoroughly researched newspaper ever created in America. This is where the industry is going.” The front page was littered with headlines, teasers and graphics. The consultant held up a copy of The Birmingham News next to it. It looked hopelessly gray and old fashioned.

From a technology perspective, the timing was perfect. Like The News, many newspapers had installed offset presses, which made it much easier to use color throughout the paper. And our research had been telling for years that the attention span of readers was growing shorter. USA Today took this research to its logical conclusion, with tons of color and short articles. Soon, our newspaper — like many across the United States — looked a lot like USA Today.

Last week, USA Today itself announced a major overhaul, de-emphasizing its print edition and cutting about 130 workers. Here’s how Editor John Hillkirk described it: “We’ll focus less on print … and more on producing digital content for all platforms.”

According to The Washington Post, USA Today has suffered declines in readership and advertising along with the rest of the industry. Circulation, once the nation’s largest at 2.3 million, is down to 1.83 million, and advertising is down about 50 percent.

“We have to go where the audience is. If people are hitting the iPad like crazy, or the iPhone or other mobile devices, we’ve got to be there with the content they want, when they want it,” Hillkirk said.

While I’ve been suggesting for a couple of years that the future of news was in the handset, I think that matter is settled. Statistics on press releases going out from my agency indicate that the number of people reading the news on handsets may well exceed the number accessing news on desktops and laptops.

There are still a lot of questions, of course. One of the biggest is whether we’ll access the news through handsets or through a browser. Right now, practically every major news outlet has its own app, and my own Android has a bunch of them installed. However, I’m finding that I can zip through the news more quickly by reading pages in a browser, rather than launching a series of apps.

Finally, there’s the question of how and how much we’ll pay for the news content. One school of thought is that we’ll pay for the apps, or perhaps pay a recurring charge to use them. Or the answer could be one of the dozens of payment schemes currently being tested. Or it could well be that we haven’t even hit upon the answer yet.

The creditors claim that the company became functionally insolvent when Chicago real estate tycoon Sam Zell bought the company in a leveraged buyout. The company entered bankruptcy proceedings 20 months ago.

Tribune owns the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Hartford Courant, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and numerous radio and TV stations.

Viewpoint: There are Real Perils in non-stop news

By CARL CARTER

The principle that “more isn’t always better” is well-known and preached by every doctor dispensing medicine, every mother fighting with her teenage daughter about make-up and everybody who’s ever nursed a hangover.

But we still can’t seem to grasp that reality when it comes to news. We check our iPhones and BlackBerries constantly during the day for the latest tidbit. Fox and CNN keep up a constant stream, trying desperately to keep the news fresh hour after hour. On most days, it doesn’t matter much. We consume a lot of trivia and pick up some “facts” that get reversed by dinnertime, but there’s little harm done. But when something goes wrong, as it did with the recent Shirley Sherrod fiasco, it can get ugly very quickly.

For those who’ve been in a cave, the drama started when conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart posted a video at 11:18 a.m. on Tuesday, July 18, showing Sherrod describing her supposed discrimination against a white Georgia farmer who risked losing his home. Several conservative outlets immediately picked up the story, and soon, mainstream media were reporting it. Before 8 p.m. the same day, Sherrod had resigned under pressure.

Naturally, pundits and politicians are using this as the basis for a “national conversation about race,” and that may well be in order. But it’s also a good opportunity for a national conversation about how we consume news.

Today’s nonstop news cycle has stripped us of the safeguards that traditionally have filtered out the trivia and brought us dependable news about what really mattered.

The turning point came in 1980, when Ted Turner founded CNN. The next big change came 15 years later with the introduction of the first browser, making possible the World Wide Web. While broadband was still a luxury, dial-up Internet service became ubiquitous in short order, and before long, it was impossible to escape the minute-by-minute flow of news.

Before the nonstop spigots opened up, the day’s news was driven largely by newspapers and TV stations. Reporters covered meetings, trials and other events. Others worked the phones, interviewing sources for features or backgrounders. When a major story broke, there would typically be several hours before a story had to be finalized for the next issue or the next newscast. An experienced editor would ask hard questions. He or she would point out angles that needed to be checked, and facts that needed to be independently confirmed. Editors and reporters would huddle and debate these and other questions:

+ Is this credible?

+ Does the source have an ax to grind?

+ Is there another legitimate side to the story?

+ Is it true?

+ Is it significant?

When the Sherrod story broke, there was no time for such questions. Even though everybody knew the video came from a source with a partisan history and a spotty record for accuracy, some media accepted it at face value, not realizing the tape had been heavily edited to convey precisely the opposite of what Sherrod was saying.

To its credit, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution quickly checked out the story with the wife of the farmer Sherrod had supposedly wronged, and they put a story on the Web early in the day saying Sherrod had, in fact, kept the family out of bankruptcy. Other media? Not so much.

By the end of the day, Sherrod had been drummed out of her USDA job.

The reality is that, for all the ebb and flow of noise during the day, practically every important news story can be told in a few paragraphs. Anybody who wants to stay informed can do so with a

daily read of his or her local newspaper, supplemented by one mainstream national source, such as The New York Times or The Washington Post.

For years, we were protected by the filters of the media. It sometimes felt like deprivation or censorship, and sometimes, it was, but it was far more efficient. Now, those filters are gone, and they won’t be reinstalled. The lessons of the Sherrod story may slow the media down a bit, but, ultimately, it’s up to us, as news consumers, to decide how to most efficiently stay informed.

Carl Carter is president of NewMediaRules Communications, based in Birmingham, and is a former Birmingham News reporter. He writes about media issues at www.overcoffeemedia.com.

“What makes a good newspaperman? The answer is easy. He knows everything. He is aware not only of what goes on in the world today, but his brain is a repository of the accumulated wisdom of the ages.

“He hates lies and meanness and sham, but keeps his temper. He is loyal to his paper and to what he looks upon as his profession; whether it is a profession or merely a craft, he resents attempts to debase it.

“When he dies, a lot of people are sorry, and some of them remember him for several days.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/40308_Page2.html#ixzz0vAQWuO75

You can download a PDF of the study (free registration required).

• Format. Kindle is boxing itself in with its proprietary book format, and that will stall future sales of both books AND hardware. I have probably bought 20 or so books on my Kindle, but I’m not buying any more, because if I switch to another hardware platform, I may lose that investment. Kindle does a decent job of importing PDF, text and HTML formats, but Amazon’s swimming upstream versus the epub format used by other hardware, including the Nook.
• Publisher arrangements for books and publications. Publishers aren’t especially happy with Amazon for a variety of reasons, including the share they receive for Kindle sales. iPad forced the issue in its contracts, and Amazon has made some concessions, but there’s a long way to go before this picture becomes clear.
• Hardware vs. apps. The success of the iPad has made it clear that tablets will need to do more than just read books and magazines to rule in the future. I’m not sure the e-ink technology will ever be able to compete with displays that offer more graphic power. That could make this battle more about apps than devices. For example, Borders just jumped into the fray with its new e-book store, but they’ve made it clear they’re not going to offer a hardware reader. Amazon had an app on the iPad the day the iPad was released, and there are some decent book reader apps available for most platforms. They just need to establish relationships with publishers so users can get content more easily.

For anybody wanting to buy a reader or tablet now, my advice is to take a cold shower and wait for a little more clarity. If you just have to buy something, either go with the iPad if graphics are important (and if you’re willing to pay $500 plus) or the Nook, which you can now get for $150. I’d avoid the Kindle because you’re likely to end up like me, with a piece of hardware that only lets you buy a format that you may not be able to take with you to your next machine.

So where are they? Auctioneertech.com blogger Aaron Traffas and I had a brief conversation about this in the lobby at the National Auctioneers Association Conference & Show this week, and that got me to wondering. I poked around on androidtablets.net for some hope, but didn’t find much. Even the forums over there are dead. The Archos 7 is apparently available at a price point of $199, but it didn’t exactly wow the CNet reviewers.

There were reports this week that HP has apparently pushed back its Android tablet plans, and there’s speculation that it may abandon the product in favor of one using its newly acquired WebOS, which was the platform for the well-reviewed but rarely purchased Palm Pre. There’s a $199 iRobot that seems to be available only through a site called chinagrabber.com. Sorry, but I’m looking for something a bit more mainstream. Best I can tell, that’s pretty much it.

For those waiting for an Android-based tablet this year, Acer seems to be the best hope. The netbook powerhouse claims to be close to releasing a 7-inch Android tablet in the US.

This is the reality behind two interesting articles. One, published in American Journalism Review, documents the decline in reporters covering important federal agencies since 2003. The other is Poynter media business analyst Rick Edmonds’ update on the various experiments that are about to launch for charging for online news.

The time when we thought advertising would fund quality news coverage has come and gone. It just didn’t work out that way. And now, we face the reality that when there’s no money for quality news coverage, we get less of it. Information isn’t free and never was.

Existing AT&T customers with the $29.99 unlimited data plan will be able to keep it, but new customers will have to go with a new $15-per month 200-megabyte plan (think email only) or a DataPro option, which gives 2 gigabits per month for $25. If you go over, it’s an additional $10 per gigabit.

Nobody will go broke on the new plan. But the sticking point with practically every “pay to read” plan has been that Internet users have become spoiled. We pay our monthly DSL or wireless data bill and use all we want. We’re addicted to the smorgasbord. What this will mean is that the cost of the application (some news organizations hope to build their revenues in the cost of their apps, while others will sell monthly subscriptions) is just part of the equation. If the data flowing into the app puts you over the 2-gigabyte top, you’re now paying an extra $10 a month on top of the cost of the apps and subscriptions.

If that’s too much geek talk for you, think of it this way: It’s like getting a great deal on a new refrigerator only to realize that you have to rent a truck to take it home.

AT&T has provided a data calculator to estimate your data usage, but it’s not especially helpful. One of the biggest data-eaters these days is streaming music from Internet radio stations, and the calculator only allows you to estimate 10 minutes a day. Who listens to music for only10 minutes? The setting for streaming video is a little more realistic, and it’s scary. If you watch 49 minutes a day (one show), your usage is already over 3 gigabytes, meaning your $25-a-month plan is now $45, and all you’re doing is catching the evening news.

Sure, stuff you just read uses a lot less data, but part of the promise of the slick new tablets is multimedia. You’ll be watching video on the New York Times, reading NPR and listening to podcasts from nearly everybody.

If you can afford it, that is.

I assume AT&T is hoping all the headlines will focus on its related announcement, that it will allow tethering with the iPad for an additional $20 a month. (Tethering allows laptop users to use the 3G connection in their handsets to access the Internet using a USB cord.) The extra $20 won’t buy you any additional usage. You’ll still have to live within 2 gigabytes or fork out still more.

So what’s this add up to? Let’s assume you go with the $25 plan plus tethering and make modest use of streaming music and video. You’re likely paying $65 for 4 gigabytes.

The next move is up to other hardware manufacturers and the deals they cut with service providers. The coming deluge of tablets will all have the same problem if Verizon, T-Mobile and other carriers follow AT&T’s lead and eliminate their unlimited data packages. But if they don’t, we may have to learn that all that cool stuff on our new tablets comes at a price. It’s not just an iPad problem; it’s a wireless data problem.

And for a culture that’s hooked on flat-rate pricing, that’s a huge adjustment.

Once we see the hardware, we’ll have a better feel for how the various devices perform for books, newspapers and magazines. About the only thing that’s clear about this market right now is that it’s about to become very, very crowded. Here are just a few examples of developments to watch for this summer:

• Dell announced this week that its Android-based Streak will be available this summer through AT&T. No pricing details have been made available.
• French manufacturer Archos has been taking pre-orders for months (why do people pre-order a product nobody has ever seen?), and finally seems ready to actually deliver it. The company sent the product to the FCC for approval this week and reportedly will ship starting June 1.
• In addition to its promised Slate, HP is rumored to be working on an Android-based tablet.
• Acer, a leader in desktop, laptop and netbook computers, recently showed off an Android-driven tablet that has a small mechanical keyboard similar to that of the Kindle.
• Taiwan manufacturer Via promises a lineup of five tablets using Android at price points between $100 and $150.
• Google and Verizon are reportedly collaborating on a tablet that will, of course, use Google’s Android operating system.
• Marvell was recently showing off a 10-inch tablet running Android 2.1.

That’s nowhere near the complete picture. It’s hard to track because there have been so many false starts, rumors and delays. For most of these, I’d say believe it when you see it.