Josh Sternberg of digitday.com reminds us that NewsCorp’s news app, The Daily, celebrates its first birthday this week, and after one year it’s not just viable but a growing commercial success in an Internet environment hostile to the publication’s business model: subscription.  Yet it has a quarter of a million monthly readers and 100,000 paid subscribers.

Though (full disclosure) my son is a reporter for The Daily, my enthusiasm for the app is completely independent.  I just happen to think it’s terrific. But don’t take my word for it – it’s the iPad’s third most popular app.

Though The Daily started out as a dedicated iPad application, it is now accessible on Android, but the eye-popping graphics play best on the iPad’s big bright touchcreen. Some fairly heavy-hitting advertisers like Verizon, IBM and BMW display their wares there.

“I think it is the future of print,” digitday quotes a media executive, an odd description since there isn’t a single drop of printer’s ink associated with the publication.  But that’s just the point: it delivers all the news, culture and entertainment of a printed newspaper or magazine, but the videos, popups, callouts and other dazzling graphics are exactly what the iPad was created for. If you don’t have one, borrow it, download a two-week free subscription and see for yourself.

By the way, I have dubbed The Daily a “zapp” – drawn from “news app” the way “blog” is derived from “web log”. I believe this term may be original with me and if it achieves wide circulation and enters the English language (Oxford English Dictionary are you listening?) I hope Rupert Murdoch will reward me liberally, or at least recognize me with an asterisked footnote in one of his, um, papers.

The Daily After One Year: Some Lessons Learned

Richard Curtis

Until recently, Guardian columnist John Naughton was so dedicated to his subscription to The Economist magazine that every weekend he made an “appointment” to immerse himself in his cherished publication.

But lately? “Every Friday, the postman delivers the print edition of The Economist. But the envelopes now sit unopened, gathering dust on the hall table.”

What happened?  The Apple iPad happened. The magazine’s management launched it as an app, accessible on a pay-wall basis for subscribers only. “It’s easier and more pleasant to read than its printed counterpart,” Naughton writes, “and much nicer than the Kindle edition of the magazine. The iPad has delivered a genuinely ‘immersive’ reading experience. In part, this is a reflection on the device’s screen technology and interface. But it’s mainly down to the quality of the app’s design.”

From a magazine it’s just a hop, skip and jump to books, says Norton. “The concept of a ‘book’,” he writes, “will change under the pressure of iPad-type devices, just as concepts of what constitutes a magazine or a newspaper are already changing. This doesn’t mean that paper publications will go away. But it does mean that print publishers who wish to thrive in the new environment will not just have to learn new tricks but will also have to tool up. In particular, they will have to add serious in-house technological competencies to their publishing skills.

“If they don’t do it, then someone else will. There will always be ‘books’. The question now is: will there always be publishers?”

The full story in Publishers take note: the iPad is altering the very concept of a ‘book’

Richard Curtis

Remember two years ago when we were on a death watch for the New York Times? “The New York Times is approaching the point where it will have to manage its business primarily to conserve cash and avoid defaulting on its debt,” wrote Henry Blodget on businessinsider.com. “This situation will only get worse as advertising revenue continues to fall, and it will be very serious by early next year.” Blodget’s piece was bleakly headlined New York Times Running on Fumes. Things got so desperate the newspaper had to borrow a quarter of a billion from a Mexican mogul at extremely disadvantageous terms – 14% interest.

Last week the Times‘s business section carried this story: “The New York Times Company intends to pay back a $250 million loan from the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helú in early 2012, three years ahead of its due date.

Que pasó?

For one thing the Times dumped its wholly owned Boston Globe and slashed its debt by one-third, from $1.1 billion to $670 million. For another, the economy began to pick up and advertising revenue, every newspaper’s lifeblood, began to flow again, though not at pre-recession levels.  The paper’s website, though falling short of the paywall created by rival Wall Street Journal, has become dynamic, entertaining and accessible, and ad revenue on the site was up 14% in the third quarter of 2010. The digital version of the paper is available on a growing number of e-devices, generating income more efficiently than the profit-draining paper edition.

Though we don’t want to read too deeply into the Times‘s turnaround, it might presage a reversal of the decline in all paper reading formats – newspapers, magazines and books – as readers return to the pleasures of paper and discover the limitations of digital formats (see Students Give E-Textbooks a Failing Grade).

Read the AP story in full here.

Richard Curtis

The Internet is exhilarating. It grabs you. It’s impulsive.

But…

Magazines are enveloping. They embrace you.  They are immersive.

That is the message going out across the land on the heels of a major promotion aimed at reminding the world – especially the alien occupiers of our planet known as Young People – how wonderful magazines and newspapers are and how much we would lose if they were to succumb to the forces unleashed by the Web Revolution.  The campaign brings together rivals who recognize that, in Benjamin Franklin’s phrase, “We must all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

“Together, we can change the conversation about magazines and share what we in the business know to be true: magazines are relevant, play an important role in society and have a strong future ahead,” says Ann Moore, chairman & CEO of Time Inc. “This campaign showcases those messages of relevancy and longevity.”

The press release, which you may read in full here, uses some persuasive metrics to drive home its point:

• Magazine readership has risen 4.3% over the past five years
• Average paid subscriptions reached nearly 300 million in 2009
• Adults 18-34 are avid magazine readers. They read more issues and spend more time per issue than their over-34 counterparts
• During the 12-year life of Google, magazine readership increased 11%
• Magazine effectiveness is growing. Ad recall has increased 13% over the past five years. Action-taking—based on readers recalling specific ads—increased by 10%.
• Magazines outperform other media in driving positive shifts in purchase consideration/intent.

One reason to return to print reading, omitted from these talking points, is that it’s good for you, especially for young minds, which a number of scientific studies suggest may be compromised by the distractions of screen reading and viewing.  (See Watching Books and The Medium is the Screen. The Message is Distraction)

The magazine industry’s message is one we believe in and promoted in countless postings. Though the promo doesn’t include print books the implication is unavoidable. If you’re not sure, watch the video and say “book” every time you hear “magazine”.

RC

PBS.org’s MediaShift recently hosted a two-part debate by two men with big credentials and even bigger opinions. The issue was whether newspapers should charge for online content.

Moderator Mark Glaser did his best to keep the dispute civil. Taking the pro-micropay position was David Carr, who writes the “Media Equation” column for the business section of the New York Times. In the other corner, opposing micropayments – virulently opposing micropayments – was Mike Masnick, an outspoken and influential blogger and founder of the Techdirt website. The photo at right not them.

Read The Great Debate on Micropayments and Paid Content, Part 1, then Part 2.

RC

One of my mother’s favorite mottoes was “Nothin’ for nothin’ and damned little for a dollar.” I wonder what she’d say if I told her that ESPN The Magazine was offering subscribers – some 2 million of them – one full year of the magazine PLUS free access to Insider, its subscription-only website, for one dollar? The newsstand price for 26 issues of the magazine is $129.74 and a one-year subscription (which includes free access to the website) normally costs $26.00. No matter how you dice it, the magazine’s offer is irresistible – less than 4 cents per issue for a year. The offer expires no later than mid-October.

If you’re squinting skeptically and wondering what’s the deal, you’ll want to read an interview with the magazine’s general manager, Gary Hoenig, conducted by CNBC’s sports business reporter Darren Rovell. Here’s Hoenig’s explanation in a nutshell:

What we’re trying to do is get people to experiment with our paid Web site, Insider, which magazine subscribers are entitled to but they’re not signing up for at the numbers we had hoped for in the past. So what we’re doing is giving them an opportunity for a year to experience both the magazine and the Web site for only $1 and obviously we hope to get them back to a decent price for the two of them.

Beyond the nutshell is a unique strategy for triggering synergy between a print publication and its related website, something that every newspaper and magazine is trying to do but few are doing very well. By stimulating that synergy, ESPN The Magazine will deliver the most bang for the buck. And when we say buck we mean One buck. When the first year’s subscription is coming to an end, the magazine offers what Harry Scherman, founder of Book of the Month Club, called the negative option.”The opportunity here is to change the decision making process from opt-in to opt-out,” says Hoenig. “…Instead of saying, ‘I like this. Am I willing to fill out a credit card form or any other kind of form to get it?’ You are now saying, ‘Do I not like this enough to say no,’ and that’s a very different decision.”

Obviously, Hoenig and his team are confident you won’t say no. Read Why ESPN The Magazine Is Going To Four Cents.

RC

Stephanie Clifford of the New York Times reports that “the Reader’s Digest Association announced on Monday that it would file for prearranged Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for its United States businesses within 30 days.” Though it sounds dire (most of us would be concerned if we were $2.2 billion in debt) the restructuring of the company, with its extensive holdings, will bring its debts down to $550 million. Most of us would be concerned to be in debt by that amount too, but the debtholders taking over the corporation seem to feel its manageable.

The jewel in the corporation’s crown is the revered magazine, Reader’s Digest itself. It will continue operating but at a reduced schedule (10 issues a year instead of 12), a reduced circulation (currently 5.5 million, down from 8 million) and a focus on”socially conservative values,” says Clifford. Here’s the article in full, and here’s a piece we posted a few months ago as this event began unfolding.

RC

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.

“Nothing succeeds like excess,” quipped Oscar Wilde, and had he been alive at the launch party for Talk magazine in the summer of 1999 he would certainly have found grist for a score more bons mots. “It seemed as if a new era of media fabulousness had been christened,” writes the New York Times‘s David Carr in commemoration of the tenth anniversary of “The Party,” as it was referred to by all who attended. “The Hearst Corporation and Miramax, owned by Disney, decided to finance a new general interest magazine led by Tina Brown, fresh off her triumphs at Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, that would lead the national conversation.”

Carr’s priceless description of the Lucullan event on Liberty Island, illuminated by a fireworks display mounted by pyroliterato George Plimpton, captures a moment in time when wealth, privilege and luxury found their embodiment in a magazine of stunning opulence.

But this was not only the end of a century but the end of an era as well. As the rich and famous partygoers sated themselves with food and drink they paid no heed to the omens that drifted toward their island like nefarious wraiths. It would not be long before these materialized in the shapes of 1′s and 0′s: a new system for delivering text, pictures and advertising directly to readers without reliance on the medium of print on heavy, glossy paper.

A year earlier the Rocket e-book had been introduced, the first practical electronic book and a forerunner of the Sony Reader, Kindle and other devices capable of delivering the same content as books and magazines for a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the price. That such devices could not be displayed on the coffee tables of Hamptons beach houses and Park Avenue duplexes would be of little consequence to class of people that had lost its beach houses, duplexes and its shirts.

If the attendees of the Talk bash sensed any of this they were too dazzled by the fireworks to express it. As in Edgar Allan Poe’s Masque of the Red Death the voluptuaries danced while doom waited outside the palace gates.

“Rather than the culmination of a century of press power, the Talk party was the end of an era,” writes Carr, “a literal fin de siècle. Flush with cash from the go-go ’90s and engorged by spending from the dot-com era, mainstream media companies seemed poised on the brink of something extraordinary. But that brink ended up being a cliff.”

Read about the exquisite last hurrah of the magazine era in David Carr’s 10 Years Ago, an Omen No One Saw.

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair…

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.

We know that information is gold. But for those who believe they have found a way to sell information that can be accessed for nothing, the ore may be fool’s gold. And the list of alchemists trying to do it is pretty impressive: News Corp boss Rupert Murdoch, NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker, ACI CEO Barry Diller, MediaNews Group CEO Mary Junck, and a whole host of magazine, press and media lords for whom experience does not seem to have triumphed over cockeyed optimism. Diller categorically assets categorically that “People will pay for content. They always have…I absolutely believe the Internet is passing from its free phase into a paid system.”

Jon Fine, blogging in Business Week’s MediaCentric online column, describes two new ventures, Journalism Online and ViewPass, whose founders seem confident they can roll back the Information Wants to be Free tide that is swamping the newspaper and magazine businesses. Though he approaches the schemes with some well founded skepticism (“Too good to be true?”), Fine nevertheless sees how a subscription model just might work this time. The key is something called Freemium, which sounds like a blend of gasolines but is actually a blend of concepts:

” The preferred terms du jour describe “premium” offerings, or even, forgive them, ‘freemium,’ given the blend of free and paid. The dream dancing through some executives’ heads involves a hybrid model: maintaining much or all existing free traffic while charging some subscribers fees for certain offerings, then using data from these users’ browsing habits to help sell ultra-targeted — and thus higher-priced — advertising.”

Fine points out that for any of these “moonshots” (his word) to work, “publishers would have to agree on a platform, consumers would have to use it, and then, most importantly, companies would have to buy ads.” What he leaves out is the most important condition of all: ironclad security against the predations of hackers and file-sharing freemongers. If a digital illiterate can penetrate a subscription website (see A Google-Fu Master Unlocks the Wall Street Journal. Or, How I Know Subscription Model Won’t Work), what can an army of determined geeks accomplish?

Nevertheless, we wish these enterprising business men and woman success and godspeed. I have instructed my stockbroker to buy shares in the first newspaper or magazine that can demonstrate a truly foolproof subscription model. As he’s fond of reminding me, though, there are an awful lot of fools out there.

RC
Every blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by Business Week.
Painting by Herbert James Draper

How is Reader’s Digest gonna keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen gawker, ew.com, espn.com, and Huffpo? So far, the 87-year-old RD can’t, and its declining fortunes and circulation confirm it. The New York Times‘s Stephanie Clifford points out that “Reader’s Digest is decreasing its circulation to 5.5 million from 8 million and lowering its frequency to 10 times a year from 12.” That’s down from a circulation of 17 million at the height of it popularity.

The rural, middle class Just Folksy readership that fueled the publication’s dominant position in the magazine industry, has gone young, urban, savvy, wired, college educated and – gulp! – liberal. Clifford says that in order to cling to its diminishing base, RD has to give its content and viewpoint a rightward spin. “It’s traditional, conservative values: I love my family, I love my community, I love my church,” Clifford quotes Mary Berner, Reader’s Digest Association’s president and CEO. “The project that signals Reader’s Digest’s future, Ms. Berner said, is a new multifaceted effort produced with Rick Warren, the evangelical pastor, called the Purpose Driven Connection.” Is that conservative enough for you, Mr. and Mrs. Middle America?

Among the behemoth’s holdings are such magazines as Every Day With Rachael Ray and The Family Handyman, which some may think corny. Or, as Berner commented, “They are brands that may not be considered cool by the often elitist and self-absorbed standards of New York media.”

Berner herself seems to have passed muster with the representative of the elitist New York medium that interviewed her: “She had taken a car from Manhattan that morning, and wore a pink wool shirt-dress, patent leather Manolo Blahnik heels, and diamond hoop earrings,” writes Clifford.

You can read about it in Reader’s Digest Searches for a Contemporary Niche.

RC
This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times. Every blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers. Without them our free society would not only be impoverished but imperiled. We must strive to find a way to rescue the industry, even if it means nothing more than buying a paper on the street. Support your local newspaper.