Oct 13, 2005

Quotidiens : le futur d'après le Washington Post

À quoi ressemble le futur des quotidiens ? L'échange a eu lieu sur le site du Washington Post entre le reporter Frank Ahrens, spécialiste des médias au Post, et Russ Wilcox, P-Dg de E.Ink, "qui vient de créer un papier électronique qui combine la facilité de lire sur du papier avec l'accès Internet à l'information ", explique le journal.

Je ne résiste pas à vous donner le lien (ici -- merci à John Burke de Editorsweblog.org pour l'info). Vous trouverez sans doute des éléments de comparaison avec ce que j'ai déjà écrit ici (ce post et celui-là).

Frank Ahrens nous remet en mémoire la scéne de Minority Report où un passager lit USA Today sur un papier électronique :

"It LOOKS like a USA Today in that it's a full-page newspaper (called a "broadsheet") but instead of a handful of papers, it's a paper-thin video screen, thin enough to fold up and put under your arm. Instead of static photos and text, it's constantly changing text, video and perhaps sound. Think of it as a combination paper, television and Internet, presumably wirelessly connected to a futuristic Wi-Fi, perhaps the next generation of the new Wi-Max super hotspots that are rolling out and cover several square miles instead of several square feet."


Et d'ajouter :

"As I was writing today's story about the Wall Street Journal shrinking its size to save on newsprint, I thought about that scene. Imagine a world in which newspapers no longer print any paper copies. For a paper the size of The Washington Post, which prints about 700,000 papers a day and 1 million on Sundays, that could be an annual savings of more than $110 million, with newsprint at $625 per metric ton and rising.

Imagine a business model where such a video screen is cheap enough that The Post could give one away to new subscribers, weaning them off the paper product. Or, if you didn't want to subscribe, you buy a screen and get the daily paper when you buy it, one at a time."

Un futur, qui d'après Russ Wilcox, ne serait pas si loin : "I think you'll probably really see that around 2015. Et, comme moi, il pense que ce journal électronique sera donné gratuitement par les journaux aux lecteurs. Des journaux qui dépensent $ 150 par an et par lecteur en impression.

"Within 2 or 3 years you've built up $300 to $500 of budget per reader so you can give it away for free because the device itself will cost less than $300. I'm assuming the paper (such as The Post) will buy 700,000 of these and plunk them down. And they need a lot less capital from Wall Street so their return on equity will go up."

Un produit idéal pour les annonceurs toujours selon Russ :

An electronic paper has infinite space because you can bring forth as much content as a reader wants. And the resolution of our ads is very high. And when you touch the ad you can interact with the advertiser and the paper will take you to the advertiser's Web site and you can get more information. So ideally there should be a better connection between the ads you're shown and what you're actually interested in."

Une interview passionnante que je vous laisse découvrir (ici)… même si Frank Arens n'a pas l'air de beaucoup aimer les bloggers.

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