The New York Times reports tonight that Amazon will unveil a larger-screen Kindle later this week, an important move for the newspaper industry looking for alternative forms of distribution that emulate the print experience.
The Times reports on the wave of electronic reading devices in the wings but notes Amazon, with its Kindle already in hundreds of thousands of hands in the U.S., ready to move to a third version with a larger screen.
Clearly the opportunity for newspapers is to move to e-readers and other mobile devices, along with PCs, instead of the high-cost printing and distribution in place. This is a particular attraction in parts of the United States where many newspapers now are unprofitable but within attractive media markets. The key, though, is to develop e-readers capable of more than black and white display. For that we will have to wait some time. That's an acute issue for advertisers, but also for replicating the photojournalism and design attributes.
The challenge many cite in the Times article is the c
