The iPad and other tablets may prompt newspapers to start changing when they update content, reports Roger Fidler, program director of digital publishing at Reynolds Journalism Institute. Here’s why: His study found that tablet owners tend to use their devices more frequently at home after 5:00 p.m.

Fidler — the man who predicted an iPad-like device in 1994 — also found:

* Compared to a printed newspaper, 60% of large media tablet users and 50% of smartphone owners consider their experience consuming news on their mobile device to be better.

* Compared to watching news on TV, 63% of large media tablet owners and 46% of smartphone users favored watching on their mobile devices.

* Compared to listening to news on the radio, 73% of large media tablets said their experience was better, 59% of smartphone users favored their phone.

Read the release on Fidler’s study after the jump.

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Chris Hughes was greeted by New Republic staffers “as a kind of liberator and savior” when he bought the magazine, reports Paul Farhi.

Leon Wieseltier, who has been at the magazine for three decades, tells the Washington Post media writer that “it’s a spectacular relief” that the 28-year-old Facebook co-founder is taking over the magazine.

The pressures of the present moment in American journalism aren’t just economic; they’re intellectual, or rather anti-intellectual. I feel very confident in saying we’re not going to become quicker, fuzzier, faster. We’re reviving our old standards.

* New-media pioneer Chris Hughes makes a bet on old media with New Republic purchase (Washington Post)

Former Patch editor-in-chief Brian Farnham says Journatic should be given a chance to make up for the fake bylines fiasco and do better, but…

I have to admit the operation gives me a cheap feeling. It’s hard to put your finger on, but it may be the lack of mission, of purpose (outside of making money) that one senses from them. They give me the same feeling that speed chess does — they seem to exist only to win a game, not to improve how it’s played, or (God forbid) to extend the life of an art form.

* Journatic episode illustrates cost/quality issue in hyperlocal (streetfightmag.com)

Newspapers’ financial distress “is more visible by the week,” writes New York Times media columnist David Carr. “With underfunded pension plans, unserviceable debt and legacy manufacturing processes and union agreements, the newspaper industry looks a lot like, well, steel, autos and textiles.” (Carr says he’s told by “two highly placed newspaper executives” that more newspaper companies will probably use strategic bankruptcies to deal with pension obligations.)

David Carr

The bread and butter for most of the industry is local information. But it has become seemingly impossible to make money creating daily compendiums and throwing it on people’s doorsteps. ….

And it’s not just newspapers. AOL’s ambitious local news effort, called Patch, is losing $150 million a year, by some estimates, and is no closer to cracking the code.

Carr says the Newhouse family’s regional Web sites — including nola.com, mlive.com, al.com — “have generated traffic and have active forums, but they are a miserable place to consume news. Balky and ugly, with a digital revenue base below much of the rest of the industry, they seem like a shaky platform on which to build a business.”

But, he adds, “who is to say that the Newhouse family is any more misguided than the rest of an industry that is scrambling for safe ground? After all, the math is daunting, and there is a shortage of magic bullets.”

* Newspapers are running out of time to adapt to a digital future (New York Times)
* Hannah Miet on Carr’s column and Kari Dequine’s letter to Romenesko (Atlantic Wire)
* Gannett’s pension plan is worth a closer look (Gannett Blog)