May 9, 2024
In five languages (English, Mandarin, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian) and two U.S. printing, “Newsonomics: Twelve Trends That Will Shape the News You Get” is the first Ken Doctor book. Sign up here for notice of the new Newsonomics Readers.
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 ...
Read MoreConventional 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 ...
Read MoreIt's a tough dance, and one that conservatives love to watch. I'm struck by how different the dance is in the UK, another English-speaking country with a fairly decent history of democracy and free press. There, the Guardian -- which is now getting a global profile for its work, courtesy of its ...
Read MoreIsn't Apple wanting 30% of fees for apps a little like [Sony CEO] "Howard Stringer demanding 30% of the revenue produced by TV shows running on Sony TV sets"? That's how a friend put it to me when we talked today. It's a confusing world, no doubt, but still Apple is fundamentally a ...
Read MoreThe UK moves have many parallels in the US, but the concentration of them in so short a time portends new waves of news industry transformation, and maybe some regression, across the Western World.
Read MoreNews Corp.'s Avatar has taken in $2.75 billion. Compare that financial flexibility with the Times, and it’s night and day. The Times Co.’s total 2009 revenues: $2.4 billion, less than Avatar itself has produced.
Read MoreWe can look at each of the major revolutions in digital news and commerce, and see how news companies responded. Search. Late. Paid search. Way too late. Video. Late. Social. Too late. Mobile. Largely too late. News companies have used old yardsticks to measure new technologies, and the ...
Read MoreFor the Times, Thought Equity Motion will take about two years of news video, from the time when the company started to produce video in earnest, and enable their greater re-use. The Times hopes that digitization will open the door to wider web usage and greater monetization.
Read MoreNews 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 ...
Read MoreThe 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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