Still Fit to Print?

With the App Store, Steve Jobs gave the newspaper industry an innovative way to distribute and charge for their content, similar to what he did for the record industry. The newspaper industry responded with a flash of insight: How about we do all that and not charge for our content? And so, while iFart costs a buck, applications like NYTimes, USA Today, and WSJ are all free. Our local hard-up daily had an even more radical response to the pricing dilemma: Fuck the App Store. Why? Find out from Phil Bronstein. As the Chron’s former executive vice president and editor, current editor at large, and featured speaker at the panel discussion “Newspapers Are Dead. Now What?” he’s good for some of the hard, practical truths about running a newspaper into the ground. Ask him why you have to read his backwards. Providing the more ethereal stuff will be journalism professor Lowell Bergman, Kara Andrade of “community funded reporting” Web site Spot.Us, and Cynthia Typaldos of Kachingle, a site that wants you to give money to sites you like to read.
Mon., June 29, 6:30 p.m., 2009