Maverick Indonesia

The e-paper trend

 

 

Kompas launched its e-paper service on 3 July 2008 on the heels of a similar launch by Republika, Kontan and Koran Tempo. What these papers man by an e-paper offering is to literally print the papers virtually on the web.

 

Using something call soft press technology, readers can go to their sites and click onto a page and a particular story. The story clicked pops up large enough to read and is of good resolution.

It is a step toward meeting the challenges posed by a Web 2.0 world but it is difficult to see how merely printing the papers on soft copy instead of hard ones will make the papers more competitive. Marshall McLuhan spoke about the medium being the message but the papers here seem to be trying to send out the same messages with different mediums.

You cannot help but wonder whether anyone online would find this format useful at all.

Written by Marini