The newsonomics of the missing link

In this evolution, the iPad is so far our human pinnacle, though it will be followed by wonders to come. It also marks a signal change in digital usage, and especially in digital news consumption. I think of it as the likely missing link in the digital news evolution. It’s a link that, out of ...

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Nine Questions as the NYT’s Pay Fence Gets Ready to Go Global

Is part of the plan a backdoor Sunday paper/digital access new bundle? Three of the people I talked with on the day of the announcement had begun to run the subscribe-to-Sunday, get-free-digital access numbers in their head. At a $4-a-week introductory rate, that’s $208 a year. Which gets you ...

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NYT’s Good Timing on Pay Launch, Amid News Chaos

Here is the growing epiphany about these core readers: Not only do they pay you, they use lots more than the fly-by people, the non-core sent by Google, Facebook, Twitter and all manner of other referrals. More than 50% of the Financial Times traffic comes from about 10% of its unique visitors, ...

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The Newsonomics of Apple’s/Google’s/Press+’s Pay-for-All

What’s a solution to the mess? Well, there are any number of solutions. Here’s mine: Apple goes ahead and sells digital subscriptions in its store. On revenue shares, it takes 30 percent the first year, 20 percent the second year, 10 percent the third year, and 5 percent each subsequent year ...

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The Newsonomics of Apps and HTML5

Publishers have to wonder: Is it the romance with discrete, ownable apps that consumers are willing to pay for, or is it the wider experience? We can see, in the makings of Apple’s evolving publisher subscription policies, an understanding of this dilemma. That may be why Apple is forcing news ...

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The Newsonomics of Do-Over

If 2009 was a period of emotional as well as economic depression for those in the industry, 2010 was one of simmering hope, which the glimmer of tablet emergence stoked. Now, in 2011, we’ve got a convergence of factors beginning to create a new sense of where traditional news publishing may go. ...

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The Newsonomics of Mr. Murdoch’s Daily

So if the cost run-rate is about $15 to $18 million a year, and subscription revenues net at $7 million, News Corp. would need $8 to $11 million a year in ad revenues to break even. Certainly possible, if that 200,000 number is hit and sustained, but that could be a tough proposition as tablet ...

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The Newsonomics of Tablets Replacing Newspapers

A few companies are now laying new strategy, based on private projections. They are forecasting that 20-25 percent of their print readers will migrate to the tablet within five years. (Remember, at the forecast rates, one in five Americans would have a tablet by 2014.) All admit that it’s ...

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Paywalls, Patch, Public Media & Pointcast Memories: 11 Conventional News Wisdoms We’ll Test in 2011

Conventional Wisdom #1) Readers won't pay for non-business content. Yes, we know that readers will pay for the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, and that Consumer Reports, which helps us save money, counts more digital subs than anyone else. While some smaller dailies have begun to ...

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News Indigestion? Flipboard’s McCue on Web Dyspepsia

The desktop web has been the ultimate YellowPages/weather update/news check-in/bar bet paradise. Remember back to the '90s, when we discovered we could go anywhere. It was liberating and mind-blowing. Now, perhaps comforted that the short-read, information-access medium will always be there ...

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