Apple’s new iPad tablet gives newspaper and magazine publishers an opportunity to claw back what they’ve given away: profitability. The potential for reading a newspaper on a screen of reasonable size and shape and in a format that actually resembles the paper-paper you hold every morning, has been boosted sky-high by the introduction of Apple’s tablet.

Actually, for an inveterate reader of newspapers the format issue remains, whether you read one on a Kindle, iPad, Skiff (pictured left) or other device. If you hold the device vertically (portrait format) size you see just one page at a time and thus lose the option of viewing at a glance what’s on both sides of your newspaper, even peripherally. If on the other hand you hold it horizontally (landscape format) you can see both sides of the paper but cut the size down to an uncomfortable dimension. If this is the price we pay to shift from paper to plastic, I say so be it, but I say it with a big sigh. Because, dammit, I love my newspaper just the way it is.

But throwing a tantrum won’t stop the clock, so we must expect a day when today’s “paper” will be plastic, and reading the paper will become an anachronism as quaint as the “cc” in our emails that describes carbon copies. Newspaper publishers are rethinking their business model and considering a variety of solutions aimed at sealing the leak of content into the digital river from which all currently come to drink their fill free of charge. Last fall the Wall Street Journal started forcing news-hungry website visitors to become subscribers or miss out on breaking news. The New York Times has announced a similar initiative.

Though dropping today’s news into e-book format seems simple enough to do, there are land mines, As Brad Stone and Stephanie Clifford of the NY Times point out “Media companies may have to swallow hard before tethering their futures to any high-tech company, let alone Apple.”

“Many publishers believe their economic health depends on finding a direct line to their customers, and it is not clear whether Apple — and other aggregators of Internet content — will allow that.

“Magazine publishers, for example, maintain sophisticated databases about their customers, which lets them cross-sell products, renew subscriptions and entice advertisers with statistics about their wealthy readers. A big part of the business is automatic renewals charged to credit cards.

“But when magazine publishers sell applications through the iTunes store, they do not get credit card information or even the name of the buyer.”

To make sure they aren’t jumping from the frying pan into the fire, Stone and Clifford report, some powerful magazine and newspaper publishers have formed a consortium that will operate its own online store, sell its own content, and collect its own consumer information.

You can read about it online here. Enjoy the pleasure while you can; the day will come when you’ll have to become a subscriber to access this content.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.