Rupert Murdoch has an enduring devotion to newspapers and is eager to extend his key franchises from print to emerging digital formats. Mr. Murdoch has embraced Apple’s iPad tablet device for delivery of News Corporation’s Wall Street Journal and The Times of London. However, long before the iPad emerged on the scene, The Wall Street Journal was one of the only newspapers that succeeded in operating a website with mostly paid content. The Financial Times reports that News Corporation has sold 10,000 iPad subscriptions at $17.29 per month and 5,000 subscriptions to The Times of London for £9.99 per month. The one sticking point for many Wall Street Journal subscribers? Print can often be a cheaper alternative which rankles consumers who expect to share in the benefits of lower production and delivery costs. Read this article for more details.
Newspapers: Era of Unprecedented Plenty?
Barron’s published an interesting article this weekend by Jonathan A. Knee, director of the Media Program at Columbia Business School and co-author of The Curse of the Mogul. (Note: Mr. Knee’s co-author for the book is Bruce Greenwald who has been discussed in the past.) Mr. Knee’s article pertains directly to an topic that appeared here in May regarding newspapers and “creative destruction”. Read this article for more details.