I've been watching the first two seasons of Babylon 5 of late on Hulu, where they're currently available for free as streaming (Flash-based) video. Babylon 5 is an SF show that's no longer aired, but that I'm exceedingly fond of. It's set in 2025, on a space station. In an episode of Season 2 called "Divided Loyalties," at the very start of the episode, two characters meet at a newspaper kiosk. Each carries a printed paper from the previous day, which is deposited in a slot in the kiosk. A digital voice acknowledges the paper to be recycled and crediting their account. The voice then asks questions about the content they wish to be included in that day's paper. They each answer in turn, wait a minute, and a printed, familiarly shaped newspaper drops into a slot at the base of the kiosk.

I remember the first time I saw this; I was delighted. It was cool; it used POD (Print on Demand) from a convenient kiosk, it recycled, and the paper was custom-made to a particular user's preferences. Lately though, I like the idea a lot less. Don't get me wrong; I love the idea of the printed newspaper surviving. There's a lot about it that's technologically very cool. Michael Cohen blogged about the printed newspaper using the concept of affordance here. He points out the convenience of sharing the sections of the paper, the fact that the toddler won't do $300.00 worth of damage by dropping the paper as she might by dropping mom's Kindle, and alludes to other uses of the paper as a physical object.

But I've also thought of another virtue of a mass-produced paper, one that isn't tailored to specific tastes, in part because of playing with Feedbook's "create your own newspaper" option. If we use the amazing power of digital technology to filter our news, then we'll be likely to only hear one side of an issue, rather than a multiplicity of voices. I value that multiple viewpoint and hearing completely different viewpoints. I think, given the way tags and search filters work, that most readers will filter for "their news," much the way that there's a tendency to follow the blogs we agree with. By "filtering" our news this way as readers we miss seeing a realistic picture. We don't hear the "other" points of view. I also think that there's virtue in reading and exposing ourselves to new ways of thinking, and new information. Or, to put it another way, it never hurts to know how the other guy sees it.

In the recent flurry of print newspapers folding, (like the Seattle PI), or going out of business or being heavily in debt (the Boston Globe is the latest to flounder), some people are pointing to Amazon's Kindle, and the Web, as the root cause. I don't think digital versions of news papers are the problem, rather, I think over spending, too much debt and changes in the way ads work are the real problem. But I don't want the traditional newspapers to go away. I know that ad revenue is down, costs for printing and delivery are up. I don't think buying every subscriber a Kindle is the solution. I'm also not comfortable with DRM (Digital Rights Management) systems that can be used to restrict access to content that a user has purchased.

I think what I'd like is a hybrid solution; printed papers available, possibly via POD kiosks, certainly by subscription, in traditional kiosks and news stands, but the entire contents available on the Web, with perks for subscribers. I just can't figure out how to make that model work.

Neither can the papers.