“I am sick and tired of reading the snailpaper edition of the New York Times! By the time it arrives, the front page is already old news. I much prefer reading the Times online website with the up-dated news as it happens.”

Update, 9:08 a.m.: The NYT is featuring the above headline on the Extra Home Page. Good for the Times! Ahead I’ll reproduce a screen shot of the head from Extra. Now if only the paper will retain the blog headline option! – D.R.

The New York Times is mysteriously killing the wonderful “Extra” option, which, if you turn it on, will turbo-charge the home page with blog headlines blended in with news stories. December 1 is when the option will vanish. Without offering an explanation, a home-page notice directs readers to the  Blogrunner aggregation service, which, for now, has a lower Alexa “reach” score than TeleRead.

I’m baffled why Extra option is disappearing and will ask the Times for an answer. “Extra” is one reason why I spend far more time with the Times than the Washington Post even though I live in the D.C. area.  Is  “Extra” not bringing in enough readers to justify the bother of having it? Is the Times worried that outside blogs are enjoying too much exposure? Or does it want to protect Blogrunner? In the Times place, I’d worry more about the total number of eyeballs and less about Blogrunner individually.

And speaking of the Times: Story shows how the Times still doesn’t get e-books

The smartphone-vs.-dedicated-reader debate, long familiar to TeleRead community members, is the topic of a feature called Library in a pocket.

The most interesting stat is from the Codex Group—predicting that there might be four million owners of Kindles and other dedicated devices after the holidays, far more than the current estimate of 1.7 million. There are 84 million smart phones and similar, at least 50 million of which, being iPhones and iPod Touches, can run e-book software like Stanza and a Kindle app.

Sure enough, as required by law, the Gray Lady ends the feature with a story of a father who keeps paper books around for his kid. Hmm. Does this mean that parents should do likewise with paper newspapers? Just as oddly, the Times does the future-of-books act with too much of either-or-approach. An e-book-hip reader responds with, “Does the future of transportation lie in airplanes, or cars?” As someone who goes back and forth between an iPod, a laptop and E Ink devices and a desktop, I’m hardly alone; and stories like this annoy the hell out of me.

Update, 9:08 a.m.: What this post’s headline looks like on the home page of the NYT’s Extra Home Page

To the New York Times’ credit, it is now featuring the above headline on the Extra Home Page. This is how it looks—a kind of virtual hall of mirrors.

Reminder/Disclosure

We’re a news-and-views outfit, and it’s always possible we may have dealings with the Times—or other media. That said, as you can see from the above, we’ll not let business issues get in the way of our coverage.

* Crain’s New York Business has a short piece on September 2009 e-book sales at Random House seeing a dramatic 700 perent increase over the same period in 2008—largely due to Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol. Just imagine how much sales might go up if they actually sold their e-books at reasonable prices!

* PC World Magazine has a review of the bebook Mini e-book reader. They like it, on the whole, but note it has some interface issues.

* Buzzmachine writes about Rupert Murdoch’s nose-cutting face-spiting decision to start blocking Google. A German research group has analyzed how much damage Google would take from such publisher search-blocking, and come to about the same conclusion as the bulldozer operator from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: almost none at all.

* While this is not related directly to e-books, Wired has a piece looking at a “copyright time bomb” that will soon be giving the music industry more headaches. A 1976 copyright law had provisions that will allow recording artists to reclaim the copyright to their works from the record labels that currently hold them.

The article claims that this applies to all forms of copyrighted material, not just music, but does not go into any details as to how this could apply to non-musical works.

Over at the Marginal Revolution blog, Tyler Coven wonders if the Times couldn’t “rent out somebody else’s sports section and stick it in the paper with a NYT label on it and maybe an extra article about the Knicks?" (Via Jim Romenesko.)

Sure, he’ll lose market share, but he’ll make it up by catering to a clientele made up entirely of money-spending, hard-partying young people, plus a single undercover detective who infiltrates the shocking world of underground websites to track down a killer by having conversations in front of pole dancers. I assume.

I would say something about how silly Murdoch’s decision is, but after reading Sjoberg’s piece, I have literally nothing to add.

Also of possible interest there is the an update on Truman dog quote mystery (thanks to Garson O’Toole for that tip).

Here is the listing of newspapers that are available. Note  the Black Newspaper listing. I wasn’t even aware that such a category existed.

Atlanta Constitution—1868-1945
The Baltimore Sun—1837-1985
The Boston Globe—1872-1926
The Chicago Tribune—1849-1986
The Christian Science Monitor—1908-1996
Detroit Free Press—1831-1922
Hartford Courant—1764-1984
Los Angeles Times—1881-1986
The New York Times with Index—1851-2006
New York Tribune—1841-1922
San Francisco Chronicle—1865-1922
St. Louis Post-Dispatch—1874-1922
Wall Street Journal—1889-1992
Washington Post—1877-1993

International Newspapers:

The Guardian & The Observer—1791-2003
Irish Times & Weekly Irish Times—1859-2008
The Scotsman—1817-1950

Black Newspapers:

Atlanta Daily World—1931-2003
The Baltimore Afro-American—1893-1988
Cleveland Call & Post—1934-1991
Chicago Defender—1910-1975
Los Angeles Sentinel—1934-2005
New York Amsterdam News—1922-1993
The Norfolk Journal & Guide—1921-2003
The Philadelphia Tribune—1912-2001

“The Kindle is a fantastic invention for books,” various news accounts quote him, “but it’s not much of an experience for newspapers.”

So what do you think, gang? Certainly a color screen would help both readers and advertisers, and a fairer revenue split at Amazon would help the news business and many a book publisher.

I myself use my Netbook for newspaper reading, for free, though I would gladly pay for a mix of archival access and a really good Time-style reader if the costs wee reasonable and the subscription applied to many publications. Ahead is PixelQi technology, which many a netbook could start using to make them function as e-readers. In Murdoch’s place I would focus a bit less on devices and a bit more on content and presentation on a variety of machines.

Henry Allen, senior citizen and ex-Marine, is POed over the decline of the long feature story—although other, less cerebral reasons arose here: namely the obscenity that a colleague taunted him with during an editing session. Allen just didn’t like the copy. More at SolomonScandals.com.

Well, so much for newspapers. Anyone with some charming editor-writer stories from the world of e-books? No fistfights, I’d hope—although a passion for QC always helps.

That would probably be going too far. Still, it is interesting that the Chicago Tribune is experimenting with going cold-turkey: they are going one week with as little AP content as possible to see if it is feasible to cease using AP stories entirely when their contract expires in October 2010.

As the article points out,

Some newspapers have determined that shared wire content that is available to readers from many other outlets is worth less to them than unique, proprietary content, especially online. Coupled with reductions in the space allocated for news in print, papers are weighing whether there’s the same need for Associated Press content as in the past.

Were the AP’s “fair use” policies a sign of desperation? Will the Tribune decide to kick the AP habit, and other papers follow suit? It will be interesting to find out.

Westlake Village, Calif., Oct. 19, 2009 – From the Austin American-Statesman to China’s Zhejiang Daily, IREX Technologies will give readers access to more than 1,200 leading periodicals when its DR800SG eReader hits Best Buy shelves.

Agreements with NewspaperDirect and LibreDigital – two leading distributors of digital content – will give IREX users access to the most comprehensive collection of newspapers and magazines available in the eReader market, up to 1,100 more titles than what is currently available on some competitive devices.

“For eReader users the device itself becomes secondary to the reading experience and the content they can access via that device. A key part of our strategy is to provide no-hassle access to a variety of content, and adding these industry leaders is a significant step in that direction,” said Kevin Hamilton, North American CEO, IREX Technologies. “With our 3G connectivity and easy-to-use device, readers are never far from their local newspaper or their favorite magazine – even if they are far from home.”

NewspaperDirect delivers the world’s most popular newspapers and magazines to millions of readers the way they want to receive them – in print, online, on smartphones and IREX eReaders, wherever they live, travel, work or play.

Providing instant access to more than 1,150 full content digital replicas with enhanced digital features, PressDisplay.com and PressReader from NewspaperDirect offer subscribers the largest selection of titles – recognized as paid circulation by international audit bureaus – in a highly engaging format.

“NewspaperDirect is proud to be a longstanding partner with IREX Technologies,” said Alexander Kroogman, CEO, NewspaperDirect. “Combining IREX’s best-in-class digital readers with PressReader’s superior content presentation capabilities, together, we deliver the consummate, sustainable reading experience medium that must be experienced to be believed.”

For nearly a decade LibreDigital has helped some of the world’s top news publishers, including USA Today, The New York Times and The Washington Post, deliver replicas of their content across an expanding array of digital channels. Content is provided in the open ePub format, which means it can be downloaded on the IREX DR800SG and transferred to a variety of devices, such as a PC or Smartphone.

“Digital consumers want access to their favorite publications at the touch of a button,” said Russell P. Reeder, president and CEO, LibreDigital, Inc. “At LibreDigital, we’re working with the world’s largest newspaper, magazine and book publishers, and now with IREX, to give consumers easy access to content and the high-quality wireless reading experience they crave.”

The IREX DR800SG – a sleek, 8.1-inch, touch-screen eReader – offers multi-mode 3G wireless capabilities from Qualcomm and Verizon Wireless, provides a reading experience akin to a traditional book, and frees up eReader content with an open approach to buying and transferring content. IREX supports multiple formats including industry standard ePub format and multiple DRM solutions, rather than a single, “closed” proprietary format that locks content to a specific device. In addition to content from LibreDigital and NewspaperDirect, IREX users also have access to the Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS) eBookstore.

Pricing and availability

The IREX DR800SG with a leather cover will be available later this fall at select Best Buy locations. The device has an MSRP of $399.99. Wireless access to download content is included in the cost of the DR800SG and no contract is required.

The article in question covers the leaders of the Associated Press and News Corp making a lot of noise at the World Media Summit about how the time has come for news services to stand up to news aggregators and search engines and demand payment.

AP chief exec Tom Curley said that more people were using websites such as Wikipedia and Facebook to catch breaking news, rather than traditional news sites, and that services such as AP and News Corp need to act now to regain control of the news content they provide.

That’s right, Tom! Take back the web! Why, how dare those search engines and news aggregators and other such sites have the temerity to publicize your content for you? Let’s not forget, this is the organization that once claimed they would charge bloggers $675 a word for the “fair use” of excerpts longer than ten words, and then retracted the claim but refused to be specific about any new guidelines.

I really like the paragraph further down the page where it talks about the AP planning to set up a plagiarism-detection system to “help boost revenue for the not-for-profit news cooperative”. Did they actually write that with a straight face? If they’re not-for-profit, shouldn’t they be concerned about things other than their revenues?

(Well, all right, to be fair, the quote also mentions the AP’s member newspapers. Still, it looks funny on first read-through.)

You know what Google should do? Google should simply remove the AP and its member papers from its services entirely. No Google News, no Google Blogs if the papers host blogs, no Google search engine indexing at all. Let the AP be entirely defunct as far as Google is concerned.

Then the AP could just find out what would happen to its precious revenue.

Edit: Edited to remove direct link to and quoting in excess of ten words from the AP article. Just in case.

Gina Trapani at Lifehacker has an in-depth first look at Google Wave that examines its various features. Wave comes off as a fancier version of EtherPad (which I covered here), incorporating instant messaging, e-mail, and a number of other features.

Robert Scoble thinks Google Wave is overhyped and will actually lead to “unproductivity.” However, Mark Milian on the Los Angeles Times Blog thinks that Google Wave has the potential to “transform journalism” into a more collaborative process.

You may notice that double bylines aren’t very common. That’s because trying to co-author a news story stinks.

The process usually involves one reporter talking to and researching a few things and another following a different set of sources and finally combining their findings toward the end. This can result in a mess of incompatible and unrelated research that gets either thrown out or somewhat-awkwardly wiggled in.

I find it interesting how much this echoes what I have discovered in writing fiction with EtherPad.

The process of writing a story together, with characters owned by respective authors, used to be a morass of writing half the dialogue and sending it back and forth for insertion of respective characters’ words, or writing it ourselves and hoping our lack of famliarity with the other person’s character didn’t lead to us making them act out of character.

With EtherPad (and, presumably, with Google Wave), collaborative fiction writing becomes akin to an act of structured role-playing, where we actually write together at the same time—and unlike normal role-playing, if we decide something came off wrong we can easily go back and tweak it.

Of course, I’m not in the Google Wave trial yet—but I can hardly wait to try it out.

Don’t bail out newspapers—Let them die and get out of the way, Daniel Lyons’ essay in Newsweek. Thanks for the pointer from Felix Torres, who adds: “Substitute ‘major publishers’ for ‘newspapers’ and his arguments ring even more true.”

Related: War of the publishing models: Sarah Palin’s pub dreads e-books, while Tina Brown’s news partner gets nimble with E.

Image: From Wikipedia.

For the Kindle, the New York Times is the best-selling newspaper. But, in 150 customer reviews, the august Times gets an average rating of just three of five stars. Some people want the $13.95 monthly subscription price slashed. Others gripe that the Kindle edition does not include all the articles.

If you own a Kindle and are a newspaper reader, you might want to go to the Kindle Review site and check the Times review and the others. For now, here is an excerpt from the end of the compilation:

In general, its interesting to see the general pluses that are common across all newspapers -

Reading on the Kindle is easier and more convenient.

People are reading more on the Kindle (than they would in print or online).
Environmental benefits

Getting it delivered wirelessly early in the morning (although sometimes there are delivery problems).

People getting used to, and liking, the layout.

You can get your newspapers anywhere in the US (or world).