USA Today Kindlified!

The economy hasn’t been too well this year and has led to many businesses struggling to stay in business. The woes of the newspaper industry is nothing new I am afraid. Even before the economy tanked, many experts were calling for these companies to go mobile and abandon their traditional business model. It doesn’t help that advertisers have been spending less money on newspaper advertising either. The newspaper publishers may be looking for a hand out from the government, but in reality they are to blame for their downfall. They have failed to fully adjust to the new publishing technologies, and they are paying for their outdated business model.

It’s always good to see newspaper companies take risk and adopt more modern technologies. USA Today is one of the few companies that is taking advantage of the Amazon Kindle platform to cut costs and generate extra revenue. USA Today has put more chips on its Kindle strategy by bringing even more premium content to the Kindle. USA Today on Kindle now includes Cruise Log, Game Hunters, Lifeline Live, OnDeadline, The Oval, and  Pop Candy. And it helps that the content is cheap. Going mobile and expanding into the digital world seems to be the only way to go for newspaper publishers, but can this strategy save them?

I am not too sure about Kindle being the savior for the newspaper publishers. These publishers have been losing readership for quite some time, and they are still going to find it hard to compete with user-generated content and blogs on the market. New digital technologies have leveled the playing field somewhat, and there are just too many alternatives out there for the consumer. Besides, there are many free blogs which provide more value to their readers than these newspapers ever did. So if e-newspaper publishers plan to make money from their work, they better develop a better premium content strategy. After all, if I can get most of my news from a popular blog for free, why would I want to pay to hear it from an e-news publisher.

Your take: can Kindle save the newspaper industry?