Michael Nolan

Tim Windsor pointed to this fascinating video about a “tablet newspaper” from way back in 1994:

It’s particularly timely to watch ahead of the rumoured Apple Tablet. If their predictions were correct we’d be using electronic papers “around the turn of the century”. So a decade off there and still no proof that there’s even a market for Tablet PCs.

There are four areas where – in my opinion – they’ve got things wrong:

Kiosks to download publications onto electronic cards

It’s hard to imagine life without wireless internet access.

“People don’t buy generic news”

This has changed radically over the last few years – on the internet it’s all about the information and people are reading a far broader range of sources.  As Mister Roy tweeted the other day:

Trouble with following links to pernicious online news is, one reads as much Daily Mail as the old Colonel with a regular sub.

These days, people always care who the publisher is.

Newspaper publishers will lead the way

I’m impressed by the enthusiasm shown by the people involved in the video but it was clearly not matched by the rest of the industry.  While there are many very good journalists pushing the boundaries online it appears from the outside that the “establishment” is far more interested in maintaining the status quo.

Advertising

There’s a very quaint view in the video of newspaper advertising transferring to an electronic form.  They certainly didn’t see Google dominating online advertising in the way they do!  What happened to hyper-local advertising?