Did you happen to see Jonathan Kay’s recent column in the National Post by any chance? If so, and if you’re a genuine conservative and common-sense thinker, it’ll have been the proverbial last straw and you’ll have cancelled your subscription by now.
Tag Archives: Newspapers
Paywalls are a good thing
More and more newspapers are putting their online content behind paywalls. The Wall Street Journal has been doing it for a while with above-average success. The New York Times tried it once, then abandoned it, only to implement it again. In the UK, the Times has been locked away behind a paywall for over a year. Now, the Los Angeles Times is about to go paywall, and Gannett newspapers, such as USA Today, will soon be accessible to paying subscribers only.
Calgary Herald out of touch with Albertans
The sad picture is becoming clearer and clearer every day. The Calgary Herald, once a newspaper with its finger on the pulse of what made Alberta, and Albertans, tick, is falling out of favour. The latest circulation numbers still show respectable numbers for the Herald, but they look less positive when one takes into account that the paper has been shedding readers, in a big way, to its competitor, the Calgary Sun.
Hacking scandal – don’t throw baby out with the bathwater
What started out as an annoying scandal in Britain has now gripped the entire world. Every newspaper or news organization has been reporting and opining wildly about the hacking scandal involving the now-defunct News of the World tabloid in Britain.
Postmedia losing money again, Digital First strategy not working
Newspapers everywhere are complaining of dwindling sales and the difficulties in switching users from “free” websites to ones hidden behind pay walls. There’s no doubt that quality journalism can’t be free – don’t worry: this site will remain free and ad-supported, because it’s not faced with the overheads bearing down on news organizations – and the day when all newspaper websites are behind lock and key isn’t that far off.
Sorry, Naomi Lakritz, but I won’t read the Calgary Herald anymore
I reported about this previously, but an update is in order. The Calgary Herald, part of Postmedia, which used to be the Canwest newspapers before it went bankrupt, boasts about its digital presence every single day, but fails to live up to its claims.
Globe and Mail’s new iPad app rocks
Last year, soon after the Canadian launch of iPad1, the Globe and Mail was the first Canadian newspaper to release an app for the tablet. But it was a big disappointment.
The do’s and don’t's of digital newspapers in the age of tablets and e-readers
One Canadian newspapers, La Presse in Québec, seems to understand where the future of newspaper publishing lies. The paper has said it will cut its print circulation substantially and rely on digital distribution, particularly via the iPad. To sweeten the deal, readers who agree to a three-year subscription will get a free iPad.
Is Apple charging too much?
Amazon and Apple share the same compensation plan for developers and publishers: the two Big A’s pocket 30 per cent of sales, and the other 70 per cent goes to the developer or publisher. Apple recently launched a new subscription feature for companies wishing to publish their newspapers and magazines over the iPad, and again, Apple gets to keep 30 per cent of subscriptions sold and – even more crucially for publishers – refuses to share too much information on subscribers.
If you’re Canadian, you’re not allowed to read The Daily
Update: Canadian Views has learned from The Daily that this newspaper will be available in the Canadian App Store as of Friday, February 4.
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No one can say that the iPad in Canada isn’t a major success. On the first day, May 28, over a quarter million Canadians purchased iPads either at the store or had it couriered to them direct from Apple in California. Since then thousands and thousands more have been sold.
The iPad really is the saviour of newspapers
The Wall Street Journal has generated more than $2 million in ad revenue from its iPad application, the Austrian daily Die Presse reports.
The WSJ was among the first newspapers to come out with a professional app for the iPad, and it seems to have paid off. Users get access to the full content of the newspaper every day, and best of all, it combines the look and feel of a real newspaper with the capabilities of the iPad.
The ads on the WSJ app are hardly noticeable, so for the company to earn over $2 million from its ads, that is a major accomplishment – and proves that subscription-based access to news content combined with some ads really does work.
Yesterday, Canada’s own Globe and Mail came out with its easy-to-use app, which also allows users to post interesting articles to Twitter or Facebook right from within the app. This new app is in addition to the newspaper’s e-paper edition (“Globe2Go”) for the iPad. Both are most wonderful applications, and any long-time newspaper reader must be wondering now why they ever bothered with old-fashioned newspaper printed on dead trees.
Other great newspaper apps that one simply must have are: The Times of London, New York Times and USA Today. All other newspapers from around the world are currently available via the magnificent app Press Reader.
Die Presse also reports that soon all (yes, all) Austrian newspapers and magazines will be launching their respective apps.
Over here in North America, we can surely expect more to come online as well.
The iPad: a renaissance for newspapers and magazines?
One of the main reasons I got an iPad was to switch my many different subscriptions to newspapers and magazines away from paper. After celebrating my iPad’s first-month “birthday”, I can now say that the “experiment” has been nothing if not a full success.
I think Steve Jobs was right: the iPad will change the way we approach computing, and it certainly will change the way we use and consume news.
Let me start by introducing you to PressDisplay. This is the brainchild of a company in Vancouver, Newspaper Direct. The company got its start in the news business about eleven years ago, supplying business people with foreign and often hard-to-get newspapers from around the world – with same-day delivery thanks to the company printing its own copy of the requested newspaper and delivering it to the customer’s doorstep.
For several years, the company has supplied most of Canada’s major newspapers with a “digital newspaper” platform, allowing readers to access their favourite newspaper from their computers, where it’s displayed in its original “printed” format. More recently, an option has been added to download the digital newspaper to most e-readers available today (Amazon Kindle, Sony e-reader, etc.).