Vox

Read All About It

One of the fun options with the Kindle 2 is the ability to subscribe to various periodicals which are delivered wirelessly to your unit. Genius, in most cases.*

I was really looking forward to the newspaper delivery, and was happy to hear our local rag was one of the many Kindle ready dailies - even though the print version is not a very high quality product. Most 'local' papers (SF Chronicle, Houston Chronicle, etc) are $5.99 per month. The Arizona Republic, however, thinks it is worth $9.99 - the same rate being charged by the big guys; Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, etc.

I decided to give them a try, anyway, and downloaded a sample issue. I knew the Kindle edition was abridged, leaving out some of the silly, fun bits like the crossword. What I didn't realize was that, in the case of the AZ Republic, the Kindle version is stripped. Unlike the other newspapers I have sampled, the Republic removes all graphic content; no pictures, no graphs, no tables. They don't do it very cleanly, either, leaving in the references to photos and such (i.e. "Arpaio, seen during a January press conference above") There is no reason for this, however, as the Kindle displays images quite well (though in gray scale)

I have been getting the The Wall Street Journal for a few days (pictures and all) and am thrilled with the content. Given the choice of which $10 paper to choose, the WSJ wins, hands down. I may still want a smaller market paper, as well, but I will end up going out of state. Austin, Houston, San Francisco, Orange County - all have great papers at a much better price. AZ Republic, even when I try to support them they find a way to stop me.

* Investor's Business Daily gets poor reviews from Kindle users for it's lack of charts, one of the best things about the print edition.

Posted by Vox at April 10, 2009 02:09 PM | technology