The digital Miner arrives

While some media pundits once boldly claimed that this era’s digital revolution would kill off newspapers, we haven’t yet seen the end of people getting their news by looking at ink on paper.

But that’s no reason for us to become complacent and ignore the changes going on all around us. Rather, the digital revolution is fast developing into a huge opportunity for The Northern Miner to improve its journalism and extend its global reach.

First, let’s look at where the Miner is today: the current editorial and advertising team has some technological savvy, but we will never be quite as comfortable with the digital age as today’s children, who will grow up in a world where broadband Internet access is ubiquitous.

And our readers today? Compared to the general population, the mining industry and thus our readership are skewed towards wealthy, older, white gentlemen who are most at ease with our traditional, weekly print edition.

Looking to the future, the new readers who must replace the old will be more diverse and far more demanding as to how, and how quickly, they can gain access to the information we provide.

In addition to the weekly paper, our newest readers will increasingly insist we provide digital content in various forms, including a traditional web site, an electronic version of the paper, topic alerts, video and audio streaming, message boards, weblogs and so forth.

In short, as time goes on, you’ll increasingly want your news to be on demand and packaged to meet your individual interests and needs.

Even the style of our presentation will need to evolve from our present formality toward a looser, more interactive tone that will better convey the personalities of the newsmakers, the reporters and the readers.

We’ll need to spike our coverage with more opinion and humour while, at the same time, preserving one of our greatest assets: our well- and hard-earned reputation for being both authoritative and “on the level.”

To be a strong, digital-media player, The Northern Miner will need to be a portal to up-to-the-minute mining news, unique analysis and exclusive commentary — all backed by an extensive, continually updated database of mining companies and mineral properties.

Toward that end, we have rolled out a key, new digital product for you in the past few weeks: an electronic edition of The Northern Miner, delivered as the EXACT digital reproduction of our print edition, available for download from www.newsstand.com every Thursday, anywhere in the world, by 6:00 AM EST.

This new digital edition is not a web site, but it has several advantages that only digital media can provide: keyword searches, direct jumps to desired sections or article continuations, quick scans of two-page spreads, and zoom-in with one mouse click.

For readers, it’s hard to describe, but there’s just something about looking at a “newspaper” that’s different from looking at a web site. The two are different but complementary beasts, and so we’ll continue to run our web site at www.northernminer.com. With a newspaper — in print or online — you see visual clues such as how the editor played the stories, and the full graphics laid out with the headlines.

All ads are visible, and advertisers can slip interactive elements into their ads such as web site links, e-mail addresses, surveys, and product demonstrations.

Apart from the obvious benefit to our readers of instantaneous delivery, the digital edition is also portable since there is no need to be online once the edition is downloaded. Alternatively, the digital edition can be printed out on 8.5-by-11-inch paper (the resulting font size is small but still readable).

You can even buy and download single issues, or sign on for a variety of subscriptions stretching to one year for US$89.

Plus — and maybe this isn’t such a big factor for miners — readers will save a few trees by choosing the digital edition over the paper one.

This new product stems from an alliance we’ve forged with NewsStand, a privately held company founded in 1999 and based in Austin, Texas, whose owners include Adams Capital Management, SSM Ventures, Noro-Moseley Partners, and the New York Times Co.

NewsStand is currently working with more than 200 newspaper and magazine publishers from around the world, including The New York Times, Barron’s, USA Today, The Globe and Mail, Stern and The Australian, and has paying customers in more than 100 countries.

So if this appeals to you, please take a look at the free sample issue of the digital Northern Miner available at www.newsstand.com

To view the edition, you’ll also need to download NewsStand’s free browser named iBrowse, which operates on PC, MAC and UNIX operating systems.

And then tell us what you think!