• by Erik Sass , March 6, 2009

It's one of the more interesting ideas to come out of the current crisis in the newspaper industry. MediaNews Group is exploring the idea of creating a customized digital and print edition of a newspaper that allows subscribers to choose which news they are going to receive--then view it on their computer, print it out, or send it to a mobile device.

The company's proposed customized news delivery service--called "I-News" or "Individuated News"--will be tested this summer with the Los Angeles Daily News, according to the Denver Post, a MediaNews publication that first reported the plan.

Subscribers can choose to receive news from a broad array of categories, including news from MediaNews newspapers in other parts of the country. It also offers news from the Associated Press and other news aggregators. MediaNews touted the possibility of targeting ads according to the context of stories chosen by each reader.

For those who can't live without print, MediaNews is developing a special printer that customers will use at home. It will format and print the stories or put them in a digital format that can be sent to computers or mobile phones. This would allow MediaNews to save money on printing and delivering the newspapers themselves.

Although the details are unclear, this system would seem to require a printer with Internet access as well as a built-in computer. No explanation was given as to why the newspaper can't be printed using a conventional desktop and printer, or how much the special printer would cost.