In today’s ever changing and complex media landscape it is my belief that our audiences increasingly have very unique and different media habits.  That said, it makes communicating for both traditional outlets, as well as organizations somewhat more challenging and more avenues are needed to reach the same audiences that used to be accessible via traditional methods.  However, while in many instances we’re talking about delivering content in an entirely new formation, I think that there are some largely untapped methods for using new venues to deliver traditional content.  Specifically, there’s a little known fact that RSS/Podcasting technology can allow for the delivery of PDF documents to subscribers.

So, here’s my request/recommendation/gripe; call it what you want but I think it is simple and would allow newspapers to benefit from these new tools.  I want my daily paper delivered as a PDF via an RSS feed, which can mean getting the paper delivered through iTunes, or on my customized homepage.  Now before you say I’m crazy, just hear me out because in part, I think that despite the advances we’ve made with the web and the delivery of content in general this would largely allow newspapers to preserve the traditional experience that they are synonymous with in the online world.  This tactic would create an additional distribution vehicle for newspapers, which would potentially allow them to recoup some of the eyeballs that they have lost in the past few years.  In turn this would create another vehicle advertisers, which would be measurable, and perhaps best of all this strategy would come at relatively low cost for most news organizations, as it would simply be further leveraging the newsroom’s existing efforts.

Certainly, I recognize that this might not be the next big thing on the Internet, and it isn’t exactly Newspapers 2.0, however for me there is just something about being able to experience the morning paper in a more traditional layout.  Now excuse me, I have to go read the sports page and the funnies!