I have the Kindle Keyboard which I got before the Fire, touch, or the new regular kindle came out:
http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Wireles...3306722&sr=8-5
They make a dizzying amount of Kindles so I'll do my best to break it down. The Keyboards are essentially a redesign of the original. They come in wifi or 3g (3G being useful if she likes to download on the go, but at a premium) and with or without advertisements (the ads cut down on price, and only show up on the main menu if I'm not mistaken. The keyboard model is good if she likes to annotate her books and from what I've read has a marginally better screen than the touch.
Before I continue, I should note that the advantage of a non-color Kindle is that it it is like paper in that it is not backlit and doesn't hurt the eyes for prolongued use. I would never read a book on an ipad or a computer screen or a kindle fire. It simply hurts; but it is the only option if her commute involves low-light situations.
The newer kindles are more compact than the keyboard one, so that is definitely a huge advantage. If she is the type that hates touchscreens, then the touch will likely be out of the question as she will be needing to swipe to change pages and stuff like that. But it definitely makes life easier than navigating around with arrow keys, a menu button, and a select button. It can get frustrating but you really don't have to use the menu screen often once the book is open.
The Fire is nice, my buddy got one for his mother and says it isn't what you expect it to be. I actually just got back from Staples and started playing with it. It's heavy, way heavier than my kindle. Screen is too small to use as an iPad type of device, and the backlight makes it not a good dedicated e-reader. Useless if you ask me.
If I'm not mistaken, all Kindles can read books, and newspapers. As for magazines, I know the Fire can, but I'm not sure about the regular ones. The e-ink screen will likely be less than ideal anyway.
All in all, I love my E-ink reader. I will likely replace mine if it ever breaks with a non-touch regular Kindle. I have only used the kindle's keyboard once for buying a book straight from teh Kindle, but I could have easily just hopped on my computer and it would have been delivered wirelessly to my device in less than a minute. I wouldn't get the touch screen though because I like the dedicated page turn buttons.
Another thing to consider: if you get the Kindle, you have to buy kindle format books, or PDFs. Nooks can utilize the standard e-book format I believe which would allow her to rent ebooks from a library. I know my library in my town now offers that option.
Let me know if I missed anything or if you have other questions.