Online tail wags print dog

The Guardian is launching a print edition that is a product of their website, rather than the other way around. G24 is a 12-page A4 pdf that can be downloaded and printed by the reader. It is updated every fifteen minutes with information from the Guardian’s site. The Guardian’s goal is to reach the lunchtime and commuter audiences. It can’t hurt that readers use their own paper (or their employers’) to print the thing.
The idea of a automatically-updated pdf edition is pretty cool. The Guardian has already announced tha they are no longer holding stories for their regular print edition.
There’s a lot to like about this model, and G24 has some interesting potential as an advertising vehicle. At the Media Giraffe conference last week, I’ve begun hearing online publishers say, “Our online edition is for our readers, but we do a print edition for our advertisers”. The physicality G24 should come as a comfort to many of them.
Originally published on my blog at JupiterResearch.