Entertainment & Entrepreneurship

In a previous post, I described my assumptions about the end of the printed newspaper. Now I’m not predicting a particular date certain when this will happen – and I’m certainly not alone in this prediction – but I want to suggest two new services that will hasten this end by proving benefits for the user that overcome the drawbacks of digital print media.

Tie Daily Newspaper to Daily Medications

The first suggestion is based on an “ageist” assumption that newspaper readership skews significantly to an older audience. If this is true, and if it is also true that newspaper readership is a daily habit, then I suggest that the Kindle, Sony eReader, iPhone or other device include a “daily medication” feature.

Proper daily dosing is a significant problem for health care. If your daily paper reminded you to take you pills, it would provide an important personal service. More significantly, if senior citizens could let their adult children (or out-of-home nurse) to know that their pills were taken each day, the person’s health outcomes would improve. The health care savings would easily pay for the cost of the devices, so that the adult children or insurance companies might even pay for the devices in exchange for agreements to sign up for the service. (I would also insist that the enrollment forms limit the use of the behavioral data. Insurance companies, for example, should be barred from adding punitive premiums for those who do not use the devices or skip their pills.)

There are other privacy issues that need to be regulated, but the medication data is already being utilized for behavioral advertising, so this usage only makes the privacy intrusion more obvious, so consider it a form of forced transparency.

Add Digital Coupons

The second suggestions extends the experiment of the airline industry to remove the last bit of paper from the e-ticketing system for domestic flights. One can now download a two-dimensional, encrypted bar code for an iPhone, Blackberry or other web-enabled device and use it to board an airplane. Gate agents can scan the screen in lieu of the paper ticket. The airline experiment tends to fizzle since most TAS officials require paper to scribble on as part of the screening process.

Grocery stores and other coupon companies have no security limitations. Newspapers can continue to tie special savings to their daily delivery of news and information. The newspapers could allow customers to “clip” the relevant coupons to a digital wallet that can be displayed on the device and scanned, keyed or wirelessly uploaded at checkout. Again, the cost savings from eliminating print coupons (and reducing the photocopying fraud that plagues grocery stores) would more than pay for even free give-aways of the devices.

Free Readers from the Pharmacies

Given the twin suggestions, I propose that pharmacies – which both accept grocery coupons and sell prescription drugs – be the source of free newspaper readers. If I’m right, then either Target or WalMart will shortly be offering free readers – which accept only their store coupons on course. Everything free comes with a price.