The Detroit Free Press (DFP) Newspaper Goes Digital Today & ShopLocal Is Playing It’s Part
Posted on 30 March 2009 by Patrick FlanaganNo Comments
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Loading ...So bold moves today coming from Detroit’s premier newspaper – the Detroit Free Press (DFP). Starting immediately, DFP will be going to a predominantly digital content distribution model. ShopLocal is playing a key role in integrating the digital weekly sales ads (eg the circulars) within the DFP electronic edition (eEdition for short) in a very seamless manner.
Maybe Detroit should be thinking about changing it's name to 'Detroit Free Digital' as the press (eg printing) portion of their business is shrinking and the digital portion is increasing rapidly.
The electronic edition of the Detroit Free Press is login/password protected so that only paying subscribers can access it (but for some reason, this appears to be maybe temporarily turned off), so screenshots will have to suffice in showing this really innovative integration of CircularCentral off. Need to call out our new friends at Tecnavia that worked hard with the ShopLocal to make this all come to life as working out how all the moving parts work together took some real engineering on both sides.
The business goal for this project was simple. Help DFP fully re-create the physical newspaper experience in a completely digital manner. Meaning, having all the news and editorial content combined with all the newspaper (circular) ads in one unified location. So the eEdition + the eCirculars. A real win-win for consumers in Detroit that starting today.
Upon logging into DFP’s eEdition version of it’s newspaper, a user would see this:
Notice the retailer logos that are in the top right hand corner. This little 'widget' auto-scrolls through a DFP defined list of retailers throughout a user's eEdition visit
Then if a user clicked on a specific logo, that user would be taken directly within the eEdition site to the right retailer specific
Fully animated circular page turning is enabled in this view that really re-creates the print experience of browsing the newspaper ads
Then if a user wants to select another retailer’s circular ad to view, they would end up at this view:
Similar to the presentation that iTunes has made famous, all of the locally relevant circulars are able to be browsed and selected by a user in one convenient place
DFP is not shuttering it’s printing plants (or news rooms for that matter unlike many other Michigan newspapers), just reducing the volume of printed physical copies that are created. Instead, DFP is stepping up alternative distribution options, many of which are digital. These
- Home delivery via DFP “paper boys” (eg DFP’s delivery infrastructure) is halting for all days of the week except Thursday, Friday & Sunday. So for the four (4) days of the week that the paper is NOT going to be delivered to people’s homes, the following other distributions options are available:
- Via US Mail delivery with the rest of a user’s mail (additional monthly fee of around $20 applies to cover postage – only downside here is the lag – it maybe 4PM or so)
- Newsstands, coin boxes and single copy outlets
- Electronic Edition with Weekly Sales Ads (or the eEdition with eCirculars for short)
- Amazon Kindle 2 subscriptions (within the next month or so – really excited to see this coming)
- Plastic Logic eReader (see previous blog post on this topic)
- Freep.com (this is the online site of DFP)
Here is an article that gives some of the finer details of what the limited home delivery changes mean for DFP subscribers. Rest assured, the comics and crossword puzzles are still included – be it online now.
Also if you are a normal everyday user and have any questions or issues, Detroit Free Press (DFP) has setup a nice support forum – worth checking out.
Finally here is a rather detailed account of one user of the eEdition today via Information Week. Worth a read to gain some perspective on the challenges of moving many users all at once to a new platform. It’s never without a few first day challenges.
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