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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Nine Questions on Murdoch’s Doubly Cool “Daily”

What will The Daily do with Cairo's Time? Egypt is the story of the week. With The Daily planning on being a daily, not an instant, news product, its thinking and philosophy will be tested Day One. If it has yesterday's Egypt news, as the revolution goes down, it will read like yesterday's. ...

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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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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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The Newsonomics of News Anywhere

News Anywhere, or unified news, or All-Access, whatever we want to call it, demands the singular focus, product development and messaging that Netflix, HBO, Comcast, and Facebook are bringing to it. Those are all skills that have been problematic in the news industry. Yet, here we are, in a new ...

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The Newsonomics of Kindle Singles

In fact, Kindle Singles may open the door even further to wider news business application, for news companies — old and new, publicly funded and profit-seeking, text-based and video-oriented. It takes the old 78s and 33 1/3s, and opens a world of 45s, mixes, and infinite remixes. It says: You ...

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Murdoch’s London Pay Wall May Be Dead-End

On the numbers: It looks like 50,000 customers have paid a monthly price for ongoing subscriptions, according to the preliminary data. That's a quarter percent of its pre-wall uniques, suggesting two huge problems: 1) Reader revenue runs at only $10 million a year, so far, a pittance, and quite ...

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9 Questions: Zell’s Clown Car, The New “100,” Tablets & Print Circ & Daughter of Alesia

Will the cats of newspaper industry be successfully herded? After pouring millions into his Alesia project, Rupert Murdoch gave the retreat order to his would-be Roman warriors, killing the tablet-oriented paid news portal initiative. Though his News Corp is the biggest news company in the ...

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Apple & the News Industry: Accommodate, Negotiate or Litigate?

Negotiation is helped greatly by competition. Ironically, Google, the first big web middleman to drive the newspaper industry nuts, may prove useful here as its Android-powered tablets (Samsung, Dell and more) take on the iPad. Can Google strike a 10% deal with the newspapers, setting a ...

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