Saving The Hometown Newspaper

As a former journalist, I love to see technological advances that help the great newspapers and magazine titles a lot of us grew up on evolve and thrive in today's digital world. Flipping the page of your favorite magazine on a touch screen panel may seem strange, but it's necessary for the survival of many media companies struggling to make the digital transition. Help is on its way. Adobe just announced that its popular Digital Publishing Suite will provide support for the upcoming Newsstand feature in Apple's iOS 5. As part of a major upgrade of the iPhone and iPad, OS Apple is creating a new section on the devices to house and manage content available via subscription in the iTunes App Store. The newspapers and magazines we grew to love will be able to present the freshest issues in background, and the new dedicated area should allow publishers to merchandise their content more effectively than they have in the past in the general App Store environment. Adobe's suite, used by many print publishers, will create documents that the Newsstand can recognize and will help publishers send notifications and create icon covers from current issues. With the popularity of  iPads and other tablet PCs, along with e-reader products like the NOOK and Kindle, the hometown newspaper is alive and in good digital health.