Advertising revenue from print newspapers in France has declined dramatically along with readership. Even fewer adults read newspapers in France than in the United States. Advertising revenue from online papers has increased somewhat, but not nearly enough to compensate for the drop in revenue from print.  In an effort to remedy this situation, a joint project between several French newspapers and France Telecom is underway to provide the content of newspapers via wi-fi downloads to a digital reader supplied by the Telecom.  At the size of a sheet of paper it is rather large for an e-book reader, but considerably smaller than a tabloid newspaper. The size of the reader is not the only thing unusual about the project — it has an English name: Read & Go — unexpected in a country known for aggressively protecting its language, even passing legislation to do so.

The reader uses the same E Ink technology as the Amazon Kindle. However, there are several differences between the two devices. The Kindle is  smaller,  currently provides a larger number of newspapers to choose from, and provides free broadband wi-fi from Amazon.  The Read & Go device is slightly larger than the Kindle, but is has a much larger viewing screen. You have to be a subscriber to France Telecom to use the device and access the newspapers. Also, as mentioned the newspapers available through the France Telecom device come with advertising.  The price of the reader is yet unknown, but a similar digital reader from IRex costs approximately $800.00. However, in order to promote widespread adoption, France Telecom may be willing to subsidize the cost of the device, in the same manner as telecoms subsidize mobile phones.  School Library Journal has a video comparison of the two devices.

You can read more about the Read & Go project in Reading Device Enlisted to Help French Papers appearing in the Media and Advertising section of the New York Times.

I do very little reading from print newspapers.  I make use of the free Avantgo service  to read on my Palm TX, mostly on the one hour subway ride from home to work.  I also read a lot of articles through the online versions of newspapers.  Recently, I have been enjoying the Times Digest, a pdf file available to subscribers to the New York Times.  I find the pdf version much more pleasant to read than the HTML one.

How do you get most of your news?  What do you think of newspapers available through various electronic means?  Will they completely replace print?