Invasion of the e-readers

Will electronic devices for reading newspapers save the newspaper industry?

Regardless of the answer, the movement is gathering steam (pixels, whatev). From today's NYT:

Plastic Logic will introduce publicly on Monday its version of an electronic newspaper reader: a lightweight plastic screen that mimics the look — but not the feel — of a printed newspaper.

The device, which is unnamed, uses the same technology as the Sony eReader and Amazon.com’s Kindle, a highly legible black-and-white display developed by the E Ink Corporation. While both of those devices are intended primarily as book readers, Plastic Logic’s device, which will be shown at an emerging technology trade show in San Diego, has a screen more than twice as large. The size of a piece of copier paper, it can be continually updated via a wireless link, and can store and display hundreds of pages of newspapers, books and documents.

Richard Archuleta, the chief executive of Plastic Logic, said the display was big enough to provide a newspaperlike layout. “Even though we have positioned this for business documents, newspapers is what everyone asks for,” Mr. Archuleta said.

The reader will go on sale in the first half of next year. Plastic Logic will not announce which news organization will display its articles on it until the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, when it will also reveal the price.

To some, this is a no-brainer. As Alana Taylor writes (h/t Romenesko):

Every single journalism class at NYU has required me to bring the bulky newspaper. I don’t understand why they don’t let us access the online version, get our current events news from other outlets, or even use our NYTimes app on the iPhone. Bringing the New York Times pains me because I refuse to believe that it’s the only source for credible news or Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism and it’s a big waste of trees.

Yet when it comes to this, I'm with Ed Achorn, who wrote a great column last week on the larger issue of reading in the digital age:

Since books transmitted by Kindle require no expensive manufacturing costs, they never go out of print. And I have found Kindle useful for buying affordable digital copies of baseball books published in the 1880s.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is, it’s important to touch real things.

I love books. I love their smell, the paper and glue and cloth covers. I love the feeling of turning a page. I love taking an ultra-sharp pencil and jotting notes in the margin, or starring or underlining passages, using a bookmark as a guide.

I like rifling through the pages while I read, seeing at a glance exactly how much is left to go.

I respect books, and discard them more reluctantly than a drunk discards a full bottle of whiskey. I think these physical objects, produced with great care, are lasting monuments to their authors, who usually earn a pittance for their sacrifices. I hate to see them vanish into the electronic ether.

I fear that books, reduced to digital information, will be — like music — easily stolen, depriving authors and publishers of their hard-earned rewards.

Ultimately, reading — at least, the kind that sires reflection — is not about speed and convenience. It is about halting the madness of life, getting away from the electronic bombardment, and spending some time to ponder. A culture that no longer values such activity is bound to shed its freedom.