The Newsonomics of the Piano/Press+ Merger, Creating the World’s Largest Paywall Tech Company

 How fast has the paywall revolution swept the daily newspaper world? This adoption of charging for digital access took flight as the New York Times pioneered its general news pay model in 2011, and the rest is history: half of U.S. dailies and as many as 20 percent of European dailies have ...

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Comcast’s Digital Deal and Our Digital Wallets

First published at Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab   Last month, I’d gotten fed up. My Comcast DVR only held 10 hours of HD programming, and I was tired of being its valet. So I did my research, found out about my old friend Tivo’s new products, and decided to buy one. Tivo was still ...

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The Newsonomics of Selling More Stuff

This new strategy will be significantly fueled by developments at two of the U.S’s top papers, The New York Times and The Washington Post. From the Times, we’ll soon see a spate of new products, individually priced and targeted at niche audiences, as CEO Mark Thompson acts on his belief that ...

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The Newsonomics of Hearst Magazines’ One Million New Customers

Hearst’s strategy here is one to watch. There are good reasons (more on that below) why daily newspapers have opted to go for door number one and get more money from long-time subscribers while making new subs a largely second priority. But they know that’s a two- to three-year strategy. As ...

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NYT 1Q Numbers: Back to Revenue Loss as Ad Declines Swamps Reader Revenue Gain

As the Times Company readies its sale of the Boston Globe (at the Nieman Lab today, I further explore the sale of the Globe and Tribune metro properties), it's clear the Globe is underperforming the Times. It was down 6.7% in overall revenue, as its reader revenue lost 1.9% and advertising ...

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The Newsonomics of Piano Media

The Piano experience isn’t about a little-heard-from place east of Vienna. It’s about scarcity. Bella says that Piano will launch in another neighboring country next month. He notes that there are 10 to 15 European countries with small populations and a smaller number of media outlets, an early ...

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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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