Daniel Ionescu

I don’t believe magazines/periodicals belong in the new iBook store for the iPad. This store uses the ePub format, which is what the Kindle uses as well, yet periodicals subscriptions on the Amazon reader haven’t really kicked off mainly because of the lack of graphics.

Also, ePub is not easy to update, unlike a website. If news breaks, how will the book-like format be updated? Comments, ratings, etc aren’t available either. All-in-all, not a very convenient solution, and not far from the static print versions.

Now, if you make an app, like the NYT (which is basically a ported version of the Times Reader), and offer it for download, you can update the stories any time, get push notifications, richer multimedia, etc. We also have to keep in mind the vast majority of magazines have websites which are updated daily, despite monthly/weekly print editions.

The only problem (for publishers) is monetizing these apps. The NYT app is free on the iPhone (I understand it will sync with the iPad one) and serves ads. Others, like the Guardian, are charging for it, but don’t serve ads.

But the resemblance between the NYT iPad app and the Times Reader desktop software leads me into thinking that NYT will try to charge for access to sections of the iPad app, like it does in Times Reader (front page stories are free). They already said they are planning another walled garden.

Nevertheless, I believe the App Store, paired with the iPad, offers more possibilities to periodicals publishers than the iBook store does.

Note — this comment is republished and adapted from my response to Will the iPad Save Media? Not Just Yet

Shane Croucher wrote an excellent critique on how (local) newspapers can easily fix their business and adapt to the changing media landscape. Here’s a quick review:

• Embrace broadcast
• Twitter
• Get some new columnists
• Develop an “app”
• Stop laying off journalists

For more details on each step, see ‘Five things newspapers should be doing‘.

It finally here: the Guardian has launched its long-overdue iPhone app (iTunes link). As expected, it’s not free, but it’s not cheap either — £2.39 ($3.88). To put into perspective, CNN’s iPhone app is $1.99 (unavailable in the UK) and the New York Times’ app is free.

I had a quick wander through the app, and I was quite impressed: it single-handedly puts to shame the counterparts from the Independent or Telegraph — though credit goes to the latter two for putting their apps out there months before the Guardian.

The Guardian app keeps the same graphic identity with the website, including colour codes and I like how you can customise the front page (similar to Thomson Reuters’ News Pro app). You can choose which categories and how many items from each category appear on the home tab, and the image gallery section is quite sleek. You can also easily browse through articles by the same author and through tags (keywords) at the end of articles.

There are a few issues with the Guardian iPhone app though. I find the trending tab on the home page a bit confusing, and the podcast integration is nice, but when you actually listen to the file, there is no cover art. The most notable downside is the lack of landscape reading mode (they could learn a lesson from the Financial Times’ app here). Also, the only way I got around for updating the content was to close and reopen the app .

Overall though, I’m impressed with the Guardian iPhone app, especially as this the the first version. The lack of advertising is welcome, but you pay a premium for that. Perhaps there should be a free, ad-supported version alongside. Landscape reading should be a must for the next update.

If you’re not willing to pay £2.39 for the Guardian iPhone app, you can still read all the content for free from Safari.

– Later edit: I used the app a bit more and I also noticed the lack of video content and comment facilities. And here’s a little video from the Guardian introducing their app (the voice over in the video sounds like the Guardian’s Head of Audio, Matt Wells).

While researching for my dissertation, I stumbled across this great analysis. Below is an excerpt.

“Most managers in the [newspaper] industry have reacted to the collapse of their business model with a spiral of budget cuts, bureau closings, buyouts, layoffs, and reductions in page size and column inches. Since 1990, a quarter of all American newspaper jobs have disappeared.

The columnist Molly Ivins complained, shortly before her death, that the newspaper companies’ solution to their problem was to make “our product smaller and less helpful and less interesting.” That may help explain why the dwindling number of Americans who buy and read a daily paper are spending less time with it; the average is down to less than fifteen hours a month.

Only nineteen per cent of Americans between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four claim even to look at a daily newspaper. The average age of the American newspaper reader is fifty-five and rising.”

Out of print — Eric Alterman | The New Yorker

Later edit – another quote from the same article from Arianna Huffington:

“Traditional media just need to realize that the online world isn’t the enemy. In fact, it’s the thing that will save them, if they fully embrace it.”

My local newspaper, The Lincolnshire Echo, whose online practices I criticised before, is pitching tomorrow’s newspaper today, with news from yesterday. Let me explain:

In an article on their website on Wednesday, November 4 2009, sensationally headlined ‘City’s binge drinking crisis‘, there are only (exactly) 50 words of text, which are trying to sell me the printed version of the paper for Thursday, November 5. Here they are:

“New alcohol profiles for England have revealed Lincoln has the second worst rate for binge drinking in the East Midlands.

The statistics reveal that the city came second out of 40 local authorities in the region.

It also came fourth for alcohol related crimes and fifth alcohol related sexual offences.”

The article continues with one last paragraph:

“See Thursday’s Echo for more on the statistics, plus reaction from alcohol prevention groups and city MP Gillian Merron.”

So they are basically telling me that they sourced news yesterday (or possibly today), but they are only going to tell me more about it tomorrow. Well, here’s why I won’t buy your newspaper tomorrow:

1. I use Google search
I will type in “alcohol profiles for England” and (2.) click on the first result (see image below)

3. On that website I am going to look after some press release or spreadsheet with the numbers and I going to look for myself (approximately 45 seconds). You can download the spreadsheets with the data I believe they used, which looks like it was last updated on October 22, almost two weeks before the Echo report was written (corrections for this fact welcomed).

4. So I already learnt about the “more statistics” pitched to me in the article, and I can pretty much guess what alcohol prevention groups will say about binge drinking and the local MP will probably say that she’s working on it.

My point: If I can find and pretty much guess the news that you are pitching to me for tomorrow in about 5 minutes, what makes you think I will buy your paper the next day?

–Later edit: One commentator (Martin, Lincoln) on the article rightly points out: “Let’s hope the source of the figures is revealed, so that we can check them out for ourselves minus the sensationalist, scaremongering tripe that they’ll inevitably served up with…”

– I intended to post this as a comment on Shane Croucher’s post on hyper-local journalism in Lincoln, part of the discussion theme going on at LSJ Bloggers. But it ended up a bit too long for the purpose, so I decided to make it a post on its own.

In his post, Shane makes a couple of good points:

• Lincolnshire Echo, BBC Lincolnshire and Lincs FM (bigest media outlets in the county) do not have enough manpower to cover every city council meeting or residents’ association forum
• The most beneficial of hyper-local coverage in Lincoln would be the West End of the city

However, my vision of hyper-local journalism in Lincoln is not particularly focused on a certain area of the city (though this is the whole idea of the concept) but on the whole city itself.

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Great video illustrating how the Internet is changing the way we find and consume news through social media. I would like to know though where all those numbers came from.

[Via Chris Brandrick]

Main: Jeff Jarvis at TheNextWeb conference 2009 (CC: Richard Pyrker) Medallion: Rupert Murdoch at the Web 2.0 Summit (C: James Duncan Davidson)

“Newspapers have had 15 years since the launch of the internet browser to reimagine and rebuild themselves for the reality of the post-Gutenberg age. But they didn’t. Now they are trying to reclaim old business models for a new media economy — a link economy, I call it, in which links give content value. Cut yourself off from links, behind pay walls, and you cut yourself off from the internet and its real value.”

– Jeff Jarvis in the Guardian. Also some great comments on his blog.

With that said, I hold on to my idea to save the newspapers.

I know this might sound a little bit over the top, but many people in the blogosphere are talking lately about the evolution of newspapers and how to charge for content more specifically. Well, I believe that charging for online content is not the best idea to rejuvenate the print industry.

What I believe is that the print industry should replace the physical paper with another method to distribute content rather than online. If that sounds interesting enough, continue reading.

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