The Digital Reader

I found an interesitng article I’d like to share. Alan Rusbridger is the head of The Guardian, one of the UK’s largest newspapers. From the article:

Speaking at an event hosted by digital agency Albion, Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of The Guardian, outlined his vision of the role that journalists and newspapers will play in an internet-led future, and took another sideswipe at Murdoch’s “dubious” business model.

He said it was important for publishers to change their mindset from an “us versus them” approach, to place the focus on involvement instead of authority.

…

“If you are open, that means you want to be part of the way the web works rather than simply on the web,” he said.

“I think that leads you to think about the whole democratisation of the web, the whole way it works as a series of links and how all information on the web is now linked to all other information.”

…

He said: “If you believe the most important thing is to try and get direct return for your content and put a universal paywall around everything then you necessarily take yourself out of those first two roles…

“That’s why I think it is a dubious business model and just completely antithetical to the way everything is going, not just journalism.

Highlighting a discrepancy already within Murdoch’s portfolio, Rusbridger contrasted the democratic, inclusive approach of Harper Collins’ social networking site Bookarmy, with that of plans to restrict content of The Times.

“It seems to me when you look at those two models, you know which is going to win. It’s going to be the open one,” he said.

What’s the ebook angle? There isn’t one, really.  But this story involves reading online, which means there is an e-reading angle.

If you’re not familiar with the term, E-reading is something we all do. In fact, you’re doing it right now. I first heard the term over on UMPC Portal, where Chippy was using it to describe all the reading on a gadget: blogs, RSS feeds, forums, email, ebooks, etc. It makes a fair amount of sense when you think about it. Reading is reading, no matter what the material is.