Some Light Reading ...

I remember going over to my grandparents house as a child and when I had to use the bathroom there was always a pile of Readers Digest sitting on the countertop by the toilet.

I suspect that was a common place to find a copy of Readers Digest in any given house aside from tattered copies that have been fingered through too many times in a doctor or dentists office.

Today I saw on the news that Readers Digest is over $400 million in debt and filing for bankruptcy.

The first thing that jumped to my mind is that Readers Digest did not embrace the digital age or they did too late to stop the bleeding.

As I understand it, The New York Times is making more money off of digital purchases versus paper purchases.

This is a sign that every magazine and newspaper publisher needs to heed, as well as book publishers in the near future as well.

I remember hearing from a representative of the Winnipeg Free Press suggest that they haven't gone to a full online edition of the paper because many of their clients aren't convinced their advertising dollars are going to pay off online.

I suppose a large paper like The New York Times with huge name recognition can pull off the full online edition while smaller papers might have a tougher time of it.

So I understand the conundrum that many smaller papers are facing if your clients who give you precious advertising dollars are not keen on investing fully in online while customers are spending less money on paper copies, ironically, because the news is all online in some form.

I just thought that maybe tiered online versions of a paper would be a good idea; you pick the sections you want and pay a rate commensurate with that and the advertising would be more targeted and perhaps you give the customer some choice in the ads they see, and charge a larger price for a customized edition of the paper with no advertising at all.

Well, only time will tell if hard copies of newspapers are available at all in another decade or so, but in the meantime, if you don't mind, I'm going to the bathroom to read an article on my iPad.