Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Oce, HP, Screen, AlphaGraphics: More on versioned newspapers

Newspapers are not about objectivity. They are about partisanship. Every community of interest needs a partisan press. That's why short run and versioned newspapers are so cool.

It's also why versioned newspapers delivered to communities of interest in high school could turn out to be such a big deal. It's not about newspapers giving information. It's about newspapers as a token of membership in a community.

Consider: The population of Serbia is a lot less than the population of the New York Metropolitan Area.

Consider: The latest web ad for the Economist is "In a global world, read the local paper." Plus Pearson is already one of the big textbook publishers,. They might be looking for some new products to protect their margins.
Serbia: The great influence of the tabloid press
- from Editors Weblog:
"The tabloid press is proliferating at a surprising speed in Serbia, to the extent that the country can claim to be the state possessing the greatest number of titles per habitant. This development is having interesting repercussions on mainstream reporting style.

The already impressive list of 200 dailies is increasing with the frequent arrival of new tabloid titles, such as Kurir, Press, Pravda, Alo and Grom. The wave of new newspapers is somewhat surprising as according to surveys only 9% of the population actually use the press as a information tool. According to the Belgrade based Vreme publication, the privileged position of the tabloid press lies very much in the nature of its contents and its involvement in the forming of public opinion.

In contrast with the majority of their counterparts in other countries which are primarily obsessed with scandal, the Serbian tabloids concentrate on politics, with populist vigour. The predominant line is quite clear: all politicians are corrupt and immoral. Yet the papers are reportedly far from independent watchdogs, they are heavily embroiled in the centres of power. Political sympathies change with the feeling of the moment, often reflecting the views of their information sources."

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