Would you pay more for the same news in new paper? Now, with corrections!

The Associated Press has issued the following correction to the story I was responding to here:

In an April 28 story about Bill Gates' address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, The Associated Press misstated New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.'s response to a question on the cost of a digital news service being developed by the newspaper and Microsoft Corp. Sulzberger said that the cost of a tablet PC device for viewing the service, not the service itself, would be more expensive than a year's subscription to the New York Times. 

Following in the footsteps of developers such as Zinio, according to Businessweek, Microsoft is working with The New York Times to develop new onscreen reader software that Times publisherSorry, Pinch, improved usability is a revenue-neutral investment. Arthur Sulzberger Jr. says is "a news experience, that more fully engages our readers, that allows them to want to spend more time with us."

Not to be just snarky, but the recent Web site redesign by the Times has already slowed my use to a stop. If that disaster is an example of the Times' notion of engagement, this is already a dead-end strategy. We can hope, though, for better.

Anyhow, the notion that the Web reading experience should be more like flipping pages is an idea that hasn't aged particularly well. The landscape is littered with readers that have failed or gotten hung up on partnering pressures instead of focusing on user requirements.

What is interesting about the announcement, which featured Bill Gates during a presentation to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, is that the software will reflow the content of pages to make pages fit the screen dimensions of the device you are using.

Reflowing pages is an intriguing idea, since it addresses the rise of tablet and mobile devices, as well as all the different screen geometries on the desktop. That Sulzberger actually talked about OS agnosticism with Gates on stage was refreshingly realistic, too. It means Microsoft has learned the lesson that its media delivery formats have to play nicely on all systems instead of trying to drive partners and users to Windows.

But dynamic layout is also anathema to page designers, because it demands vastly more metadata be attached to each component of the page in order to account for different displays—if you have a picture with a story, you want to be sure they are presented together and may want more control, such as placing it on the first page the story is displayed rather than the jump page. Breaking text and organizing graphics is an art based, for the most part, on fixed dimensions for the "look and feel" a publication strives to deliver. It's something that will present huge challenges to the layout department at the Times, if history is any guide.

The tragic aspect of this story: Sulzberger actually thinks that added usability is a pricing consideration. When asked how much the service would cost, he said it would cost more than an annual subscription to the Times today (the article is unclear whether this refers to paper or online subscription pricing). That's pretty dumb, especially given how hard it is to use the Times site today. I am a Times Select subscriber and read the opinion pieces religiously, but find the rest of the site impossible to navigate and highly avoidable.

Sorry, Pinch (Sulzberger's nickname, which he received for launching his time at the paper with cost-cutting lay-offs), improved usability is a revenue-neutral investment. You aren't going to get more money for nifty page layout. That's like trying to justify raising the price of your newspaper because you went with a higher grade of paper—it doesn't matter to readers.

Spend some money on reporters and producers, so you have articles and programming I can't find anywhere else. Then, maybe, you'll get more than I pay today. Flipping a page doesn't justify spending more, even if I'd like to see you fix your home page, first.

Note on the correction: I am not sure how one could mangle the answer to a question that seemed pretty straightforward, like "Will this cost more than a subscription to the New York Times?" Obviously the subject is the published product, not the device for reading it. Yet, for some reason, an answer apparently referring to the cost of a tablet PC made sense to Sulzberger. If I am not mistaken, a PC, even one that isn't a tablet, is more expensive than a Times subscription today. Furthermore, the software is touted as "platform agnostic," so there should be no reason to require a tablet to use it.