Telco Troika? Forget the Content Flow, Watch the Money Flow

The promise: A stable, ubiquitous system of mobile payment, even run by a cartel, should give publishers a better ramp to mobile paid content, which, so far has been largely a non-starter. Apple wants its 30%, the erstwhile phone companies are deciding on their desired share and Google's trying ...

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The Newsonomics of Replacing Larry King

Can CNN find a digital upgrade to the analog King?

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The Newsonomics of Reborn Newspaper Profit

News companies have far fewer resources than they’d like and they need. While once they were the big guys, looking at buying start-ups, for now, they’re largely on the sidelines, marveling at the mojo, the profits, and the acquisitions of the Googles and the Apples.

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News on the iPad: Expectedly, Underwhelming, with the Exception of…..

Clearly, the Journal is trying to anticipate success here -- that's clearly what's behind what some have derided as a high iPad only $17.29 monthly sub fee. Of course, that could be a good problem to have. Tablets, with good subscription price points, potentially lucrative ad rates and low ...

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The Newsonomics of Tablets, floor by floor

News and magazine publishers now see a second digital revenue line. It’s 70 percent of X (the retail price) multiplied by Y (volume of sales). As news companies reinvent not only products, but new business arrangements with the distributors of the day — from Google/Amazon/Yahoo to ...

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Nine Questions on the Tablet and the News Industry Future

The Apple model, in a sense, just sets a new cost-of-distribution. While web distribution has been free-plus, the cost of Apple distribution – if you charge for news products – is a predictable, and seemingly stable 30%. Just give me 30% off the top, says Steve Jobs. Ironically, that 30% is ...

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Nine Questions: On Tablet Dreams, Schemes and Screens of Hope

How does the tablet blur own notion of what's a book, what's a magazine and what's a newspaper? The web atomized everything, and the tablet is one form of reordering. Each device though -- a Sony Reader, a Kindle, a Nook, a JooJoo, an Adam, an Ultra, whatever -- will have a singular interface, ...

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Digital Do-Over Time: Consortium Aims to Get the Next Generation Right

Many of us shared the three-minute Sports Illustrated tablet video over the last week, and now watched at least a quarter million times. It was an ah-ha moment, amid the rat-a-tat-tat of daily digital news, moves and announcements. We could see a different kind of news reading future, one that ...

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Slate’s New SAGA Points to The Big Money

     Ask Jim Ledbetter about his new site’s driving idea, and he’ll tell you that, in part, it really just comes down to four companies. It’s the “SAGA manifesto" approach to business journalism, a term Ledbetter, editor of Slate’s new The Big Money site came up with, ...

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