To date, the printed version of digital editions has proved more popular with readers than the on-screen kind. Consultant Vin Crosbie says that among digital editions, the newsprint variety makes up as much as 70 percent of revenues.

Satellite Newspapers, which changed its name June 2 from PEPC Worldwide, manufactures vending machines that sell newspapers directly to customers. The 35-employee Dutch company has about 200 machines scattered around the globe, with 45 in the United States, including locations at Marriott Hotels in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Waikiki Beach. A customer plunks $3.50 to $5 into a kiosk and minutes later receives an 11-by-17-inch tabloid size reproduction of the newspaper, limited to 48 pages. Publishers receive a royalty on each sale.

NewspaperDirect, outside Vancouver, B.C., has 34 employees and offers 140 newspapers from 40 countries. The company currently has between 70,000 and 80,000 monthly subscribers at hotels, resorts, cruise ships, corporate offices, embassies and among expatriates who live abroad. Fees range from $2.50 to $5 for an 11-by-17-inch black-and-white reproduction, with no page limitation.

"We have saleswomen on the beach at Pattaya, Thailand. If you?re a vacationer and you want a copy of today?s LA Times, they?ll call on their cell phones, drive off to the printing vendor on their dirt bikes, and 20 minutes later you?ll have it in your hands," says Richard Miller, the company?s vice president. (The New York Times interviewed Miller here.)

Miller notes that newspapers in Dallas, Houston and Denver, among others, don?t have the ability to generate a PDF of their newspaper because of dated editorial production systems. Up until three months ago, the Chicago Tribune?s front section was paginated but its second section was not; today the entire newspaper can be transmitted worldwide.

The company is now moving into the delivery of newspapers on screen, with a focus on a portable, wireless tablet PC. "We believe that devices like the tablet PC will help open up digital editions to the masses," Miller says. "We need to play in that space."

A third company entering the arena of digitally distributed print newspapers is Newsworld of Oslo, Norway, which plans to roll out hundreds of vending machines in select markets. "For instance, in the Italian quarters of Los Angeles, we may have 20 to 30 vending machines providing La Stampa, La Repubblica and other Italian and European newspapers," founder Nils Chr. Trosterud says by e-mail. "In the Asian quarter of L.A., we may have 30 vending machines -- also placed in the headquarters of larger Asian corporations -- providing the fresh versions of several Japanese, Korean and Singapore newspapers."