Read 'Em and Weep - Slate's Jack Shafer checks out the new phenomenon of PDF newspapers. That is, newspapers delivered to your inbox in machine-readable format that is a precise on-screen rendition of the broadsheet layout -- right down to all the adverts and photos. (Usually you have to pay to subscribe to these services, but sometimes they're free if you are already a hard-copy subscriber.)

I've noticed these things here and there -- like the one the Virginian-Pilot promotes -- but hadn't realized the concept had spread to the mainstays of my daily web routine like the Post and the Times. (You can understand why not, when the link to the Post's version is buried in legal typeface at the extreme bottom right of the home page. I couldn't find such a link for the Bee, Ben.) And did you know you can get magazines the same way?

While Shafer praises the idea of accessing the traditional paper format -- which he thinks is far superior to the HTML website versions and which frequently contain more content -- he thinks the execution leaves a lot to be desired:

That these editions induce claustrophobia, even when displayed on a large flat-panel monitor, cannot be denied. For a sense of how poorly the facsimile of a broadsheet newspaper translates onto a computer screen, imagine reading a newspaper through a six-pane colonial window in which five of the panes have been blacked out. I haven't had this sort of tunnel vision while reading since the last time I endured newspaper microfilm at the city library.

My impression is that these e-versions are in fact little marketed by-products of the traditional publishing process for the print newspaper, which uniformly uses PDFs anyway. I figure newspapers simply thought they'd recoup a few dollars by selling something they were having to create anyway. And like Shafer, I think I'll wait for improvements before straying from the now familiar website-style reading. Maybe I'll switch around the time they start selling those nifty ultra-thin, flexible LCD screens in broadsheet sizes.