woodwing

The other day, together with the editor of a successful USA weekly newspaper, I reviewed a number of the newspaper apps for the iPad . In the course of that review, something came into focus that the editor found astonishing and exciting.

The current print paradigm in newspapers is the ads support the stories, and a standard rule of thumb is if you can sell an additional page of ads you can print an additional page of stories.

This is an economic restriction, based in the marginal cost of printing additional pages. It testifies to what has been the inherent tension in news writing, where printing economics often conflict with content in the treatment of a story.

But a new paradigm seems to be emerging on the iPad, due to a conjunction of new economics—the marginal cost of more text is close to zero—and a new user experience—flipping from page to page is so easy.

A salient example is the New York Times app called "Editor's Choice". In horizontal view, the stories are set as a sequence of 4 column pages, and two of the columns are frequently reserved for an ad.

In this context, the longer the story, the more opportunity to place ads. A corollary is, the better the long story, the more likely readers will page through to the end, seeing all the ads associated with it. Another corollary is, the better the editor's selection among alternatives, the more likely the reader is to begin reading the story.

This stands on its head the approach to newswriting that USA Today pioneered. In the emerging tablet context, the money may not be in a plethora of tiny news blurbs, but in great editing, deep reporting and excellent writing.