Mighty Tablet is On the Way?

Technology news has stories today about a new uber-Kindle in the works from a consortium of legacy media outlets, perhaps including the New York Times group (odd, since it was their story that only rumored themselves). Conde Naste group turned up its nose -- no color.

The hope is by using this new larger "magazine" like reader, the old Gray Lady and her colleagues can keep the advertising business together as they know it. I get the sense it is too late.

A lot will be decided this summer with the new devices, but I fear the shock of loss is necessary for the general public to understand what is really happening.

These past couple of weeks, I've seen several colleagues in the media let go. Good journalists, every one. One of our coaches commented that so-and-so, he's really good. Someone will pick him up. No, I countered, you don't understand. The job is gone; not the people. There's no where to go.

This is a selfish post on my part -- three of them were directly involved in covering women's basketball. One was the area's voter on the AP poll. Those positions don't look like they are coming back.

I wonder how many more members of the AP women's basketball poll are gone by next fall's preseason poll. And when the papers that try to hang on to those prestigious voting positions give them to their double and triple dutied staff . . . well, somewhere in America, Mel Greenberg shudders.

It's just the first wave here. Word on the street is more changes to come in our media market, which was blessed to be one of the few competitive ones -- two major dailies, all four networks with full news staffs -- left in college sports.

Gonna take more than a new tablet, or reader, or computer app. The internet remains free -- and as much as pundits want to blame decisions years ago to put content on-line at no cost, regretably they'd be done in by the free alternatives. It's not a piece of tech that solves the problem, it's solving how to return balance to the advertising dollars.

Frankly, I never read any stories about those break throughs. Only killer app tablets, which are useless without content, content that costs money to produce -- and so the spiral continues.