Magazines

It’s a great blurring of lines, one of many. In journalism, in news, the divide between profit and non- ain’t what it used to be — and may not be again.

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 to figure out the nexus of Google Checkout and paid content. As whatever system develops out of that competition, publishers could finally have a means to more easily monetize mobile content.

Isn’t it time to get a little interactive? Take Conventional Wisdom Watch (major riff on conventional wisdom over at New Republic), an enduring editorial classic measuring the political zeitgeist. It’s iconic — and readers could play along submitting their own, crowdsourcing, inventing and interacting with the brand. Yet, it’s been stuck in print as the digital world — a world of possibility — has grown around it.

In an age of hot and loud debate, amplified by cable TV and the web, Newsweek’s cool demeanor may simply be out of time and out of place. If it gets sold, it’s hard to believe that much other than the brand will long survive, as the economics under it are badly wounded. Look for it, unfortunately, to join the hallowed ranks of Colliers, Life, Look and the Saturday Evening Post.

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 Comcast/AT&T/Verizon — expect to see the Apple model invoked as “fair.”

I think we’ll see these companies go head-to-head for reader and subscriber dollars. As they do, I think they’ll face a new five-fingered exercise. Raise one hand; five is the probably the maximum number of iPad news sites for which readers will pay.

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 just a little higher than the costs of physical distribution for newspapers or the percentage that magazine publishers pay to get physical products to readers.

The tablet shouldn’t be mistaken for a newspaper made of pixels. Sure, it can receive repurposed newspaper (or online) content. However, with its next-generation, multi-touch interactivity, ability to combine text, photo, video and social elements, it offers news publishers the possibility of creating whole new categories of news- and features-based products.

The new one, and one that we should now watch carefully: Forget the first-generation web news-reading experience (who really liked it anyhow?); get ready for mass tabletized, mobile reading.

Already, the Sports Illustrated tablet demo on YouTube has drawn more than 800,000 views. Note that all the tablet talk so far is around single titles, not aggregations of news content. Talk to publishers, and here’s what you hear: This is our chance to take back the web. This is our chance to offer marketers unprecedented ways to reach our readers, with new immersive, multi-touch, trackable capabilities.

The magazine people want to forget the whole unpleasant interim of the desktop/laptop web and just got onto the tablet, where they can they think they can reclaim their turf, paying readers and grateful advertisers. Somehow, I don’t think it’s going to be that easy.