The iPod saved the music industry from death by illegal download, and now the newspaper business "needs its own iPod" to stave off a similar fate. That's the argument put forward by The New York Times' David Carr on Monday.

"It's not that papers don't make money," he wrote. "They make plenty. But not many people, or t least not many on Wall Street, see a future in them. In an attempt to leave the forest of dead trees and reach the high plains of digital media, every paper in the country is struggling mightily to digitize its content with Web sites, blogs, video and podcasts.

"And they are half right," he continued. "Putting print on the grid is a necessity, because the grid is where America lives." Mr. Carr cited a recent Ball State University poll showing that Americans spend nine hours a day on the phone, watching TV, listening to the radio and using videogame consoles. Much of that time, of course, is spent multi-tasking.

The search for the Holy Grail of electronic print technology -- a tablet-PC-like device that displays books, newspapers and magazines -- grows closer to success, Mr. Carr noted, but technical and economic hurdles must still be overcome.

"It looks simple to come up with a tablet that works, but it is not," he quoted consultant Esther Dyson as saying. "In order to have the power and portability you need, you need power. The screen is the part of the device that uses the most power."

Economic issues are also a factor when one considers the much-cited axiom that consumers don't want to pay for stuff that they can find on the Web for free. "Maybe not," Mr. Carr wrote. "As iTunes has demonstrated, there is a vast swath of consumers who are willing to pay for what they want and avoid the moral taint of unauthorized use."

He concluded: "In a frantic age where the quality of the information can be critical, being a reliable news source humming away in everyone's backpack sounds just useful enough to be a business."