Is the future of news on e-readers?
Jinfo Blog

16th August 2010

By Penny Crossland

Item

Another month, another update on paywalls. LiveWire reported in July (see http://www.vivavip.com/go/e29823 ) on the initial uptake of online subscriptions to The Times and Sunday Times (http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news) after the introduction of its paywall. At the end of July, NewsCorp would only reveal the uptake of iPad applications, presumably because these figures (12,500) were higher than anticipated. However, NewCorp can no longer hide the fact that online readership of the Times’ site has dropped drastically. Traffic statistics released today in Business Insider (http://digbig.com/5bceqw) show that the number of online visitors to the site declined by 1.2mn between June and July this year. While sites visitors numbers 2.22mn in June, this figure had dropped to 1.61mn in July. Also, the average number of minutes spent on the site went down from 5.8 in June to 4 in July. For the meantime, Rupert Murdoch seems to be ignoring the rather dismal outlook for his paywall venture and has decided that the company’s digital future lies with tablets and mobile phone applications. He has already called the iPad a “game-changer”, believing that mobile technology “will transform the print business”. (http://digbig.com/5bceqx) See Tim Buckley-Owen’s posting on that point at http://www.vivavip.com/go/e27924 After acquiring e-reading platform Skiff (http://digbig.com/5bcera) ,and buying a stake in Journalism Online, a developer of payment collection systems for online material, NewsCorp is apparently planning a new consumer news title for the US market. Paid for via subscriptions, the new title’s content, aimed at young readers, will be a combination of in-depth articles a la the WSJ and short items from tabloids such as the New York Post. However, as paidcontent points out Murdoch, while being right that the future of publishing lies with e-Readers, he has it wrong again regarding paid-for content. The kind of news he has in mind is either already available via existing apps or will be available via other, free means. To be continued in the months to come…..

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