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Kimberly White / Reuters Apple's latest device has been heralded as a savior for print journalism. But if it drives readers even further away from old-fashioned newsprint, it could inadvertently send revenues into freefall.
Publishers of newspapers and magazines who see potential for great reading experiences in Apple’s forthcoming iPad should be careful what they wish for. The device, if sufficiently successful, could be the next major blow to print publishing—possibly a fatal blow.
To be sure, the potential gain from the iPad is, no doubt, real. Take The New York Times, the publisher of the most-viewed newspaper or magazine Web site anywhere. Today, the Times offers a site that is comprehensive, creative, rich, and deep, constantly updated, and taking great advantage of many of the new tools and techniques the Web offers. But the Times site, however well executed, remains a Web site—a “sit forward” experience, highly imperfect for narrative reading, and nearly impossible to use in a manner that yields a sense of completion, a feeling of having read it all the way through, that can be a critical attribute of something to which you “subscribe.”
Online advertising revenue lags so far behind print revenue that it seems destined to never catch up.
The folks at the Times recognize this, of course, and have responded with at least two interesting and innovative products. The first of these is Times Reader, a downloadable software application that takes the notion of a computer-delivered edition of the daily newspaper to new heights. It is beautifully and intuitively laid out, easy on the eyes, and fairly comprehensive in its rendering of the contents of the print publication. (The important exceptions here come in the absence of the statistical packages in business and sports and the listings in arts and culture.) On days when the print paper fails to be delivered on time, Times Reader is a passable substitute. But it remains a “sit forward” experience as well, and is no more portable than a laptop. Times Reader does have a few advertising positions, but at least as I receive it, all are used for house advertising.
The big limitation of Times Reader, of course, is that the heart of its content is updated just once a day. That brings us to Times Skimmer, a new Web-based product. Its display and organization is similar to Times Reader, but it is updated in nearly real time and includes not just the print sections but also Times blogs, many of them quite valuable. (The statistics and listings remain missing.) There is a bit more advertising than on Times Reader. But Times Skimmer is offered as part of the Web site, in effect an alternative interface. In fact, when you click on an article, you are taken to the Web site itself, with the Skimmer becoming just a frame, eliminating many of the design advantages introduced with Times Reader. The “sit forward” and portability issues remain.
Which brings us to the potential of the iPad. It solves the portability problem (at least in places with connectivity, which is, increasingly, everywhere). And it solves the “sit forward” problem by offering a reading experience that it far more variable, natural, and comfortable. Times Skimmer on an iPad, particularly with the content displayed in Times Reader rather than Web site format, would be an excellent substitute for the print paper.
And therein lies the problem. Some have noted that it could make sense, from the perspective of circulation economics, to induce newspaper readers to switch from print to iPad. That well may be true: The savings on circulation marketing, printing, and delivery costs would be significant. Such inducements could take the form of discounts on iPad purchases. The Times has actually experimented with an analogous program using Times Reader and a Samsung netbook, offering $100 off the hardware to new non-print subscribers to the software.
But newspaper economics are not limited to circulation economics. In fact, most newspaper revenue comes from advertising. And one of the most important realities about the state of newspapering these days is that online advertising revenue, on a per reader or per impression or any other relevant basis, lags so far behind print revenue that it seems destined to never catch up—never to come even close.
View as Single Page 12 Back to Top February 13, 2010 | 6:47pm Facebook | Twitter | Digg | Share | Emails | print var OutbrainPermaLink=document.location.href.replace(document.location.search, '').replace(/\/\d+\/$/,'/').replace(document.location.host, 'thedailybeast.com'); var OB_Template = "The Daily Beast"; var OB_demoMode = false; var OBITm = "1255455386150"; var OB_langJS ='http://widgets.outbrain.com/lang_en.js'; if ( typeof(OB_Script)!='undefined' ) OutbrainStart(); else { var OB_Script = true; var str = ''; document.write(str); } Ipad, Newspapers, Journalism, Economy, Times Skimmer, Times Reader, New York Times Subscriptions, Ipad Journalism, Ipad Newspapers, New York Times Pay Wall, Death Of Print, New York Times, Steve Jobs, Apple (–) Show Replies Collapse Replies Sort Up Sort Down sort by date: beproductive
Your essay appears to assume that Newspapers aren't already in free-fall mode. I'm afraid that the template of advertiser-driven content support that used to work in print media is over. The advertisers are not coming back, and only a few newspapers will survive, and in a much-reduced format. I think Apple, with its innovation, has the potential to help monetize content delivery with fees for subscriptions. That's about all we can hope.
Flag It | Permalink | Reply | (–) Show Replies Collapse Replies 7:57 pm, Feb 13, 2010 NHBillExactly. They can't see the forest for the trees.
Flag It | Permalink | Reply 11:56 am, Feb 14, 2010 PatrickRobinsonAdvertisers buy what works pure and simple. TV advertising works because it is so damned efficient. Highly targeted magazine advertising works because it reaches a desirable demographic (think Vogue or Sports Afield). Online advertising, as a total shotgun approach really doesn't work very well. It's useful for simple kinds of branding or as part of an integrated approach associated with a broad campaign or event related promotions...it's good when aggregated with other forms. If you look at a PDF of a magazine page online the mechanics of layout work as they always have. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) on a web page can enable some beautiful design certainly (as can Flash but it's buggy and a resource hog) but the way the ads fit and work and function on a website renders them as less valuable. You consume newspapers and magazines differently than you do web based information. In print it's often more linear...back to front or front to back, perhaps starting with the front page, or table of contents (index) or the Sports page...but frequently you take the time to go through much of it, if quickly. Online you see something from Google News, pop in and that's it. You don't stay to look at much other content. It's completely driven not by branding, or the fact that you paid for it and you want your money's worth. It's all idle curiosity. Anything that is titillating, adrenaline producing, fast and frivilous or driven by your personal animus (yep, flame wars), drives pageviews and time spent. But it doesn't work for those paying the bills. Advertisers want their message to get through. They want return on their advertising investment. The metrics for advertisers...what they want to spend their money on is what will drive actual media production going forward. If you don't understand this you should.
Flag It | Permalink | Reply 1:31 pm, Feb 14, 2010 PatrickRobinsonOnline advertising is actually the problem. The limitations of human vision and ad size have created a serious problem for advertisers. They can't say much in a tiny space. If headlines or images or combinations of these are required how do you put them in front of someone? Do you compress them to the size of a matchbook cover? or elongate them into a banner? Do you make them annoying and force people to look at them by getting in their way? Newspaper and magazine advertising have been around for a long time because the form factor was centrally important in how the advertising in them appeared. You can read them easily, the ads aren't annoying and yes, you can overlook them. If you can approximate the size of a newspaper or magazine ad on the iPad and even improve on it by adding multimedia elements (think mini-infomercials) as annoying as it might sound, these would be worth more than conventional banner ads, precisely because the headlines can be bigger, more and better information can be displayed and of course more links, more tracking and accountability can be provided. What's the metric on the web today? Pageviews? Time spent? Click Through rate? What if you added these: Time spent on ad page, times video was viewed, times slide show was viewed, Number of slides deep the slideshow was seen. Being able to target the ads, or even add push to back issues (change your ad in all previous editions) all add substantial value. On the ipad, it won't be the web. Have you ever tried to copy or steal content from an iphone or ipod touch? They are not built like computers in the classic sense. One of the reasons advertising is so poorly priced online is that the content is unprotected. Anyone can access it, copy it, steal it, link to it, reproduce it on their own site. This has devalued the content and thereby the advertising associated with it. If you control the content, and present advertising in a non annoying way, larger (more like print), add more tools that provide more value to the advertiser, the architecture of how print works will be preserved. Still, information will likely break into two segments. The "fast twitch" facts or headlines anyone can reproduce and the "slow twitch" depth stories that will go behind pay walls and get attorneys armed with finely tuned search tools to enforce information copyrights. So the score of the game? Twitter, Facebook you name it. The interview with the quarterback after the game? You need to pay a small amount. The fact that a bomb went off in a foreign country? Fast twitch. The analysis and exclusive coverage of exactly what happened? Some will report the general facts and say it was reported first through one outlet. But that's where the bigger ads and higher rates will compensate.
Flag It | Permalink | Reply 10:24 pm, Feb 13, 2010 neo0071Yeah wait as second while I abandon the 1000's of free news sources online and fork our $3.45 a week for the NY Times Online ... News Agregators baby. That's what we should be talking about.
Flag It | Permalink | Reply | (–) Show Replies Collapse Replies 1:40 am, Feb 14, 2010 PatrickRobinsonIn a study recently conducted by Pew Research of the City of Baltimore 95% of all news was COVERED by the daily newspaper. Where do you think the aggregators GET the news? Do you honestly believe that bloggers (even ex-news reporters) will all somehow coalesce into an organized approach to news coverage with an equivalent institutional memory, network of contacts, and the ability to finance the effort over years? So let's examine your premise again. "Thousands of free news sources"... how many of them are you interested in following? Are your news choices all driven by what you already know? So you only search for information on matters you already know about? Or do you expect the news to bring you 'new' information about stories you were unaware of? Not many reporters ex-pros or citizen journalists alike can sustain themselves on the low returns from online ads. Online, the value of an ad is quite low...between 15 cents and $15 per thousand (again because the physical space can't tell the reader very much AND for a number of other reasons). Then '$3.45 a week'... pricing online can be much more flexible since the costs of bringing it to you are lower. Let's do the comparison one more time. You want to know the outcome of the last big football game. The score? You got that on Twitter. It's available everywhere. The story of the game? Including the injury status of a key player? and access to a video analysis of the passing percentage of the quarterback that is regularly updated...that's going to cost you $5 a month. Did I mention that you also get exclusive photos of other games, fantasy football leagues, and much more plus enhanced full page ads that are actually compelling combining text, beautiful photos, and video content (think BMW ads that take you on a test drive of a concept car through the Alps in 90 seconds...showing the latest innovations from the company). All this kind of content will cost you. The easy stuff? Yeah it'll be free and advertisers won't want to support efforts where 1. The ads don't work regardless of how often they are seen and how cheap they are. 2. They can't get their message across 3. They are reaching the lowest of the low, homeless people at computers at public libraries (ok that's a stretch but you get the point!) Advertisers want to reach people with money, not just people.
Flag It | Permalink | Reply 12:00 pm, Feb 14, 2010 Pezmedia10 years ago I ( and a lot of other people ) went to executives and said the internent will rewrite how people get information, and effect newspaper and commercial printing forever. The answer most of us got was.. " it won't happen ... not in our lifetime anyway " some even called it a fad... and so with that tremendous forsight the indusrty went forward. They decided because the internet was "free" and no real threat, it will give away content for free, and charge $800.00 for a banner ad. That is the collossal failure of the indusrty. They themselves effectively said 'our content has no value.' So today the printing industry has been ravaged with bankruptcies... market place shrinking as I write these words . I still hear ... "well printing will never completely disappear right ?... there will always be some printing. right ?.. I like books " So now the industry moves forward with the hope that 'printing will never completely disappear.' For years I heard 50/60 year old men saying " but I like to read the paper" . Ask anyone under 25 how they get their news and information. That's the future ...and it aint from anything on paper. The future is going to be a digital device(s) that will be decided in the next few years by consumers . Once consumers agree on the basic hardware platform ( which as you know is a hotly contested technology with lots of dollars currently being thrown at it. ) and decent software is developed , it's over for a lot of newspapers and print publications. Printing and publishing are changed forever . Advertising is changed forever... it's relevance and value has changed forever. The way we get content, news, information, magazines, books has changed forever. Perhaps content can still be monitized. Maybe it's not too late to find a working model. But a good first step would be for industry leaders to get their collective heads out of their collective asses.
Flag It | Permalink | Reply 4:24 pm, Feb 14, 2010 ronald64It's not just print advertising and print journalism that are being affected by the Internet. Television advertising is not far from obsolescence either. As consumers become more Internet savvy and search engines proliferate, product forums will supplant traditional advertising as a primary motivator in buying decisions. It's already happening with many products and will continue to erode the influence of conventional advertising. The hardware facilitating the change will continue to evolve as well.
Flag It | Permalink | Reply 11:22 pm, Feb 14, 2010 PatrickRobinsonTelevision advertising will be with us for a long time to come. Sorry but "product forums" don't move product very well. It depends on what the product or brand in question is of course but you must understand that if I can reach 20 million people with my message simultaneously and a product forum reaches even 200,000 (where the outcome or influence is decidedly mixed) I'm going to buy the TV time. Let's say you have a local restaurant. You get it started, your staff hired and then what? post on a product forum? Do direct mail to the zip codes around you? Call the phone book ad people and get some consulting help to overpay for an ad? Pay people to post on Yelp? Buy a matchbook size ad on a website? Pray? Yes, the web has changed many things but don't lose sight of the fact that how it IS now is not how it WILL be. In the late 90's the hot trend was for PUSH...any of you remember? It was huge. In the internet bubble that formed it was a big part. People made huge assumptions about it...venture capitalists put up lots of cash, businesses were formed.. Everyone just assumed that was the direction. Not so fast. When the bubble burst, Push died or more accurately transformed into a subset of other things since we still have push with us in pieces thanks to the cloud. Big media companies are not going to simply let you take everything you want for free. The internet looting is going to evolve too. We can look at newspaper companies or television companies, or other individual media outlets and suggest that they are all going away but that's terribly short sighted NOT prescient. The business model for all media is based on scarcity and control..(hey! supply and demand!)... if the supply of what you want is curtailed and controlled guess what? You pay. You don't stop wanting what you want. Napster was great. Then it went away. The curtailment of free music and control of it made it more desirable to pay the 99 cents to get it rather than risk the wrath of the RIAA (ha ha ha)...but more realistically...face the hassle of dealing with bad tracks, viruses, spoof tracks and more. Yes, music is still stolen but avoiding problems and a certain level of morality coupled with tremendous ease of use made iTunes sing (so to speak). It's harder with news, no question. But many people said at the time "You can't put the genie back in the bottle...music will always be free." Guess what. 10 billion downloads from iTunes is just about here. If a story is written, containing copyrighted photos, quotes, video and more and it is NOT free and openly available there's no question that the people who have for years felt entitled to have reporters, photographers and videographers work for them for free, will take umbrage. The truth is that good quality information will cost you something. It SHOULD. But for this model to work it has to be controlled by a "glass bubble" which the iPad may just represent (note MAY)... If you can't just instantly cut and paste, drag and drop and hijack content..if it's contained within an iPad page and you couple THAT with good search algorithms looking for key phrases, digital watermarks in photos and video, and then demand that the offenders take down their content, it will have quite the chilling effect. Many people now loving the "link to it and paraphrase it" world are not deep pocket purveyors. They can't afford to be in a lawsuit. The world is about to change. The iPad is an explosion. If you didn't hear it it's because you were listening to the past.
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