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Dec
22

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Jersey: Magazine leaves print for mobile apps

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A Jersey, Channel Islands based news magazine is to go online only because of a rise in printing costs and a rapid decline in advertising revenue, according to its editor.

Jersey Weekly was first published as a free paper two years ago but introduced a cover price of 85p two weeks ago to try and cover printing costs.

Editor Marcus Quinn said with a 40% rise in costs over two years and a decline in advertising revenue, a print publication was no longer viable.

Mr Quinn said they had invested £250,000 over two years in the magazine which was regularly read by about 12,000 people – 12% of the population – but would now focus on the website.

He said: “It is of course very sad for the team and clients to lose the magazine because the feedback was always very positive, but we are using the savings from discontinuing print to make a further £100,000 investment in developing our websites and providing mobile apps.”

The magazine introduced a cover price of 85p from the start of the month in the hope of covering the rising costs and drop in advertising revenue.

“We have seen good sales figures and shown there is an appetite for the magazine but with print costs alone at over £1 a copy and a cover price of 85p being split between GST, local charities, retailer margins and distribution costs, the sale of the magazine hasn’t been enough to counter unpredictable advertising revenues,” said Mr Quinn.

Jersey Weekly is published by Agent Design, who create websites for Channel Island companies. Mr Quinn said he is telling advertisers in the magazine to spend the money online instead of with other print publications.

He had approached the States of Jersey who spend money publishing details of appointments and government business in the islands only newspaper, the Jersey Evening Post.

Mr Quinn was told by the government that they were not currently tendering for other companies to carry the notices.

Jersey Weekly is currently also published in digital form through Issu but could see a mobile version in the future.

Mr Quinn said the magazine could return to print form in the future if the advertising market improves.

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Jun
22

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I’m sold on paying for the Times

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When Rupert Murdoch first announced he was putting The Times and Sunday Times behind a paywall I thought it was a rather silly idea.

I was determined I would never pay for it, after all when news is available everywhere else on the web for free (or at least ad-funded) what was the point in paying. Read More

Nov
23

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Independent printing payments

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With the launch of the new Sunday Times websites (separating from The Times) fast approaching and with all this talk of Rupert Murdoch introducing charges on the various newspaper websites he owns around the world I thought I’d take a look at alternatives.

The Independent Newspaper has an interesting way of making a bit of extra cash from their website – they’re restricting printing.

OK it might seem strange to want to print a story you’ve got right in front of you on the screen but being able to print something and then take it away to read later is a useful resource.

It’s also useful to be able to print if you want to hand it out as a resource at a talk/debate or lesson – so the idea of having ‘extra’ charges for extra prints isn’t that silly.

Unfortunately, this is the internet so they have to rely on a ‘good will’ model.

They’ve got a system in placefrom iCopyright that allows them to offer you alternatives for printing within a popup – but that wouldn’t stop you just copying and pasting.

You get the choice of a ‘free print’ where you can make up to five copies using your home or office printer for free (with an ad).

You can make an Instant print on your home printer with six or more copies from 25p to £1 per copy without ads.

You can get a quote for customised prints with your own logo for more than 100 copies on high quality paper.

Or you can have 50+ copies printed by them and sent to you within two business days, these cost 75p to £1.10 per copy – again with no adverts.

So the site itself, the articles on screen are free to view (at the moment) but printing on a bulk level will cost you money. Not sure this helps them or makes any real difference – but it is different.

Go live

Another approach might be to follow the trend currently being set by the music industry and go live, take your wares to the people.

Felix from Basement Jaxx told me that where once they would go on tour to support and promote their album – now they release an album to support a tour.

Newspapers could learn from this model, and this is one I think The Guardian seem to be catching on to.

This could be as simple as having live versions of their more popular podcasts with a paying audience or it could be by hosting full conferences.

It could be by funding talks or debates in regional theatres by controversial figures or even by running quiz nights with a star host.

Whatever approach is taken, whether it be to charge for full access to a newspaper website, to charge for premium content but leave news free or to go for an alternative like printing or live events – there seems to be plenty of choices.

I think in the end the approach that works, once the world of print newspapers is no longer viable on any serious scale, will be a combination of everything but the ‘all charge’ approach currently being favoured by News Corp.

I think what we’ll see is large multimedia news sites that charge for access to premium content like popular columnists, games and media content.

This could also include business specific content like financial data, academic resources and media industry jobs.

But at the same time make news and information content available for free and funded by advertising so that your average user, who won’t see any benefit in paying for news can still give you some revenue.

from iCopyright that allows them to offer you alternatives for printing within a popup – but that wouldn’t stop you just copying and pasting.
You get the choice of a ‘free print’ where you can make up to five copies using your home or office printer for free (with an ad).
You can make an Instant print on your home printer with six or more copies from 25p to £1 per copy without ads.
You can get a quote for customised prints with your own logo for more than 100 copies on high quality paper.
Or you can have 50+ copies printed by them and sent to you within two business days.
These cost 75p to £1.10 per copy – again with no adverts.
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Aug
3

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Time to pay for premium content?

Category: Blog, News Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Jeremy Clarkson writes a column for The Sunday Times, in fact he writes two as he writes a motoring column and an opinion column, although the only real difference is a bit of a car info at the end of the motoring one.

You can read both these columns and a fairly substantial archive on the Times website – published first thing in the morning on a Sunday, every Sunday – often before most people will have seen the paper.

He also writes a column for The Sun, another News International product, this column goes out every Saturday and there was a pretty substantial archive for that one as well.

The big difference between the two, other than the style of writing Clarkson employs for the different target audience, is the fact that eventually the Sunday Times columns will end up in a book.

Well, that was the big different until the end of June when The Sun decided there was value in NOT putting Clarkson, and a number of other celebrity columnists, on their website.

Image representing Rupert Murdoch as depicted ...
Image via CrunchBase

Instead there was a banner on the front page on a Saturday telling people to buy The Sun to read his column which is a pretty interesting development.

What with News International owner, Rupert Murdoch, announcing an end to ‘free content’ on the web, the removal of the Clarkson columns from The Sun website raises a few interesting ideas about how Newspapers can monetise online.

You see I don’t think any paper will be able to make any money out of ‘general news’, what with the BBC, Google, Yahoo, AP, Channel 4, Sky and ITN – it’s just not going to happen. Also it only takes on to give it open and ad-supported (say hello Guardian) and the whole thing falls apart anyway.

No, I think papers will probably keep their news content free and open but instead charge for the premium stuff and this will work even better if can take out a subscription to multiple papers in one go – or even multiple services.

For example, News Corp/News International is in a prime position to put their premium stuff behind a pay wall – the celebrity columnists, The Sunday Times, the News of the World, games, The Literary Supplement, The Rich List, The Educational Supplement…

If you said ‘look here is a lot of free news content you don’t have to pay for but if you pay a £5/month premium subscription you will get a digital edition of the paper and access to all this extra content – put video behind the pay wall as well and maybe even the ability to comment.

In fact the comment thing alone may be enough to get people paying – if I come across a story with a load of comments that REALLY irritate me I NEED to respond – put the ability to respond behind the pay-wall and you’ve got a new customer.

Ideally I’d pay a fixed amount per month for access to premium content across all the newspapers – say an extra £10 a month for across the board access and even more ideally this would be an ‘added extra’ on my broadband account.

If I could pay my ISP an extra £10 for full access to every national newspaper (assuming they go behind a pay-wall) I would rather do that and let them pay it on to the papers, than pay the papers directly.

I think it is inevitable that some of the content we’ve taken for granted as being free will go behind a pay-wall eventually, I’m not sure it is the best model, but if they all do it I think people will get used to it as a new ‘norm’ eventually.

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Jan
29

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The future of news?

Category: Blog, Web Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

This blog post started life as a comment on the blog of Birmingham Post Journalist, Joanna Geary.

However, having gone read the comment back I thought it was worth sharing with you as well.

Joanna ponders a world ‘beyond the parasitic news model‘. How news will be funded and organised online when the bottom falls out of the ‘mainstream’ media market.

My suggestion – let it go.

It’s possible that there is no way around the problem and we have to accept that we’re moving into a new era of journalism.

Journalism, distilled.
Image by sebFlyte via Flickr

We’ve had the coffee house era, the pamphlet era, the newspaper era and maybe now we’re moving into the social era – almost back to the idea of news spreading in coffee houses – but in this case from individual bloggers talking directly about their own story.

Instead of several newspapers employing journalists to tell stories and spread news – we’re moving to a time when people tell their own stories in their own space and those stories are in turn spread by search engines and aggregators.

Each blogger, twitterer, podcaster or even message board contributor could make small amounts of revenue from their story in their space – others could make slightly larger amounts of money by sharing the stories of others in their space.

But it’s all much more social, much more democratic and on a much larger scale globally but smaller scale in terms of where the stories are held and produced.

Local newspapers could still exist as papers of record – possibly on a public service model – reporting on local politics and big issues in each area – maybe part funded by advertising and part funded by a ‘local media tax’.

Just an idea

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Mar
4

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Width and Colour

Category: Blog Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

I was having a discussion with a friend earlier today about newspaper websites, she was basically asking why they’ve all become so big and fill up so much of the screen.

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Feb
27

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The new independent

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A while ago I did a quick review of the various UK newspaper websites, looking specifically at their Web2.0 credentials – the Independent and the Guardian came out VERY badly in that review.

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Feb
11

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New Guardian

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Guardian.co.uk

I’ve long been a fan of the Guardian website as it’s always been refreshingly open – the Guardian was one of the first newspapers to get their stuff online and then one of the first to get it online before it went to print.

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