In recent months it is increasingly clear that the major cost challenge ahead for newspapers isn't the creation of journalism but the manufacturing and distribution of the journalism.

So, why not use the latest technology to bypass the printing press and the delivery infrastructure, borrow a page from the phone companies and hitch an iPad to a newspaper subscription?

The Joe Zeff Design blog suggests this and it is not alone in conceptualizing a multi-year subscription coupled with a cost-defrayed iPad. The notion is that this would be win-win.

The challenge is twofold: First, not everyone wants or can use a substitute for ink on paper, and second, it's unclear what a newspaper could do once the subscription term ran its course. Would it have to continually refresh technology --- as the phone companies do --- to keep the customer?

Your thoughts?