FAST| forward

My old friend Gene Kelley will reach for his car keys,

 

slide a small notebook under his arm and call out loudly to Virginia. ‘Going to meet the guys for coffee. Be back by 10 a.m.”

When he joins his friends, they will open notebooks measuring a bit smaller than a sheet of letter-sized paper and take out electronic tablets that are 1/2-inch thick.

With a touch to the 9.74-inch screen, the guys sip coffee, visit, read the newspaper, surf the web, check e-mail and solve the problems of the world.

While the technology may sound like science fiction, Apple computer announced last week it will release a revolutionary device in March called the iPad.

I have followed the insider buzz on this product with interest for three months. It is not surprising that the Apple website announcing the iPad showed a screen snapshot filled with a very readable, large-type issue of the New York Times.

“This,” I said to myself, “is without question the future of newspapers.”

Gene will be able to follow the Cowboys in the Dallas Morning News and get email alerts about cruise ship bargains – after he reads his favorite local paper.

The iPad will cost $499 and will begin shipping later this year.

I’ve peered deeply into a crystal ball to anticipate how the newspaper industry is going to dig out of a hole. In a mad dash to compete with one another, newspapers began giving news content away on the Internet for free. The result is a sharp erosion of circulation, and a web-based advertising model that isn’t paying the bills.

Last week at at Texas Galveston, I learned that the U.S. Post Office is seeking a 68 percent rate hike on carrier routes for Periodicals. Even more devastating, they want to scan bar codes on newspapers before delivering them. Here’s the real kicker: the postal system only plans to install bar code readers in Dallas and Houston.

If our local papers are scanned in Dallas, it is conceivable that they will not be delivered to Cherokee County customers for five to seven days.

Under the current system, we deliver papers to the post office by 11 a.m. Wednesday. These papers are placed in post office boxes same day and prepared for route deliveries on Thursday.

If the post office prevails with this terrible plan, the iPad may be the vehicle which accelerates a web-only presence for a host of papers.

When Gene Kelley and the rest of Cherokeean Herald readers embrace iPad tablets, I’ll know the handwriting is on the wall – ‘er the iPad tablet.