by Kimberly A. Cook (Twitter@ WarriorTales)
This past week came the news of the partial demise of an old friend – The Oregonian newspaper. Part of my regular morning ritual is to get the newspaper from the front porch and read the headlines, then scan to the comics and horoscope. That will change October 1 when the daily home delivery is cut to Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
While ebooks are a boon to authors and indie publishing, the same shift is catching the print newspapers in the pocketbooks. The Oregonian is starting up another “media” company and moving the bulk of their resources to support their online digital presence with oregonlive.com
As an ex-newspaper journalist who has former co-workers and editors working at The Oregonian, it rips my reporter heart out. Knew it was coming one day, but still seems too soon. Now how they decided which reporters to keep and layoff is an entirely different story and the independent Willamette Week has a bead on that story. Read “Black and White and Red All Over” at www.willametteweek.com
Which all leads me to what this post had started out to be about; the demise of the Classic Nook. An early adopter, I bought the first Nook ereader. Works like a charm and still does. A friend’s Classic Nook croaked and they recommended she turn in the beauty to 1-800-BookNow for a $50 price because they want the lithium batteries. She can then pay only $29 to get the Nook Simple Touch, the new version you can read in the sunlight.
I have a Nook Tablet too, but I’m reading my Nook Classic until it dies a digital death. Being able to read without a backlit screen is an eye saver for those of us who are plugged in all the time.
If ereaders are already being recycled, what does that say for the rest of the print magazine and newspaper business? Upgrade happens. The new buzzword is transmedia – storytelling across all platforms. So get on the change train – it’s at the station!
Sad to see the Oregonian’s news become less current. But when you can buy the Sunday news on Saturday morning, I guess we’re already headed in that direction. I still have my pre-Kindle ebook, an RCA REB 1100. Crashed my computer a couple times trying to download an updated driver & software. Wonder how much I can get for it on eBay? (:
I actually ran across a woman in the office building where I work reading…hold onto your hats…an actual “hardback” book! And she “borrowed” it from the library!