Delivering Beyond the Doorstep
by Carol Memmott
As you race out the door tomorrow morning, grabbing your coffee mug and briefcase, don’t forget to check your printer for your personalized newspaper.Hewlett-Packard is beta testing “Instant Delivery,” described as a compact, quick read, “grab ’n’ go” publishing format that turns home and office printers into personal newsstands. This means the traditional newspaper model—print and deliver—is being turned on its head. Instant Delivery means deliver and print.
For now, two newspapers, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal, are testing HP’s new service. Other participants include National Geographic, MSNBC, Marvel Online, Time and the online magazine Slate. Consumers also can use Instant Delivery to schedule automatic delivery from any World Wide Web pages they specify.
“It combines the power of the Internet with the convenience of paper,” says HP’s Ed Neumann. “People don’t want to dial up [the Internet] themselves. They want someone to serve as editor for them, find the information for them, and [let them] print it out and take it someplace.”
Consumers can download the beta version of the software from www.instant-delivery.com. The software, not compatible with Macintosh computers, is also being shipped with HP’s new DeskJet 895Cse printers.
Here’s how the software works: Choose the Internet publications that interest you, and schedule a delivery time via Instant Delivery’s Web site. Instant Delivery automatically logs onto the publisher’s Web site at the time you select, retrieves information and prints it.
USA Today’s prototype looks like a small-format, one-page version of its online product and newspaper (see picture). Readers get a one-paragraph summary of the day’s top story and a glimpse at the weather, the stock market and sports. Five bullets zero in on other hot stories.
For now, everyone who receives USA Today via Instant Delivery will get the same version. But HP and USA Today hope that in time, subscribers will be able to create personalized editions.
Consumers aren’t the only ones to benefit. “There’s a tremendous supply-chain advantage for newspapers,” says Neumann.
“You can distribute information and news for a very low cost compared to delivering a paper to someone’s home or the news-stand.”
Calling HP’s Instant Delivery “a potential new product line for us,” Mary Fran Tyler, distribution manager for the USA Today Information Network, stresses that the system is not a replacement for the newspaper or its online sibling.
“We see this as a way to learn about the whole market,” she says. “USA Today does not traditionally have a huge home-subscriber base, and online we’ve been extremely strong in the business market because of fast access to online services. Home access is not as quick. This gives us another way to reach different customers who may not be receiving any kind of USA Today inform-ation—whether via a news-paper or online.”
Neumann says HP averages two calls a day from newspapers interested in hearing more about Instant Delivery.
“It’s a very inexpensive way to reach out to new subscrib-ers,” he says. “If we can integrate local ads into the content, that would be very powerful.”
Memmott is a Chantilly, Va., free-lance writer. E-mail, cmemmott@aol.com; phone, (703) 802-6558.