It's a deal solely for .edu addresses (which I was lucky enough to keep mine despite graduating over 5 years ago).
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Wall Street Journal to Join Apple's News Subscription Service, but NYT and Washington Post Not Participating
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
It's a deal solely for .edu addresses (which I was lucky enough to keep mine despite graduating over 5 years ago).
Well, fortunately for Apple, we already know you are wrong. Magazines have been part of Texture for years under this model!
[doublepost=1553179047][/doublepost]
You're forgetting about the advertising dollars which Apple gets ZERO from. I get it, most people don't understand the business. Subscriptions mean little to most publishers, so giving up 50% of it, is well worth it to get new eyeballs that will lead to higher advertising dollars which is where the big dollars are! Vanity Fair isn't making it off the price you pay at the newsstand, indeed, they may be losing money on each one they sell. They are making it off the ad for Coach purses that you see when you read an article in it.
There's only a tiny number of publishers, e.g., NYT that have a substantial digital subscription service, but even they only have about 1-2 million. WSJ has large on line subscription but they see value, and I think they are right, in having tens of millions more people reading their articles. WSJ has broad appeal. In contrast, WAPO has such a defined political slant, along with NYT that they may understandably fear they have already captured the readers that are interested in reading their content. Apple News is already huge, about a hundred million monthly readers and a large number will jump at this with WSJ alone being a huge bargain.
Last edited:
I don't think this is going to fail. Think about it this way, 3 million people pay 10 bucks a month just for nytimes. I'm one of them. So, if nyt got on board here, it would be a no brainer for me. I'm likely going to try it anyway. If you like news, than getting some new access is exciting. It doesn't need to be widely adopted
Damn. And it was all about you. Well, back to the drawing board...
You don't know how the magazines and newspapers financials work. Subscriptions are the smallest portion of revenue-they survive on advertising, which is why they have been going out of business as ad revenue declines because so few people are reading their articles. This is why hundreds of magazines jumped on Texture; their best hope of staying in business is to get more eyeballs on articles which leads to more advertising dollars. WSJ will likely get tens of millions more readers for many articles, an amazing boost in revenue for them, mainly from advertising rates. I can see how WAPO and NYT fear the unmet appetite to read their articles is perhaps more limited.
[doublepost=1553180295][/doublepost]
That's not how this will work or works now. Yes, their is a curated portion, but you can ignore that (you can also block sources in the curated portion although they make it more difficult than it used to be) and also simply read the sources you want. When they add magazines and previously paywalled services you will be able to peruse them as you want.
Oh I’m fully aware of that. However if they aren’t there at all I don’t have to.
Journalism and editorializing were better quality before the Internet. Reporters weren’t speculators. They confronted the people they were writing about and got confirmation. If you reported hearsay or regurgitated others’ news, you were a gossip columnist. Reporters today want to be celebrities. They want to opine, not report. They want their photo to accompany their articles.
Fortunately, there are still many niche print magazines with modest, unhurried writings. God forbid they succumb to the narcissistic, frenetic medium that technologists created.
I just know that, as part of my online subscriptions, an included feature is little or no advertising. That's a fairly common feature of online subscriptions or "premium" services. Youtube has a similar offering. Those kinds of offerings may be unique to online subscriptions, where popups and streaming interrupts are far more annoying than the old print advertisements, which were much easier to ignore and were often placed in sections of the paper or magazine devoted exclusively to advertising and/or "fluff" content. My assumption is that online subscription fees are charged according to the publisher's calculation of equivalent advertising revenue per user. As you say, advertising provided the bulk of the income of traditional print publications. As people began reading online rather than via print, traditional newspapers and magazines became less attractive for advertisers. Income for want-adds and job posting sections (the Classifieds) also steeply declined. The money-making model for online publishing is still evolving. I currently pay $16/month for NYT online, and really only get advertisements in sections like entertainment or real estate, where the primary content involves advertising. Those were the sections I generally ignored in print newspapers.
[doublepost=1553182322][/doublepost]
If WSJ offers full access through the Apple News model, they apparently see it as a plus for them to participate. They currently offer digital subscriptions for $20/mo. for 6 months, or $16/mo. for 12 months. If they offer the same content through Apple for $10/mo. per subscriber, what is their loss compared to their regular subscription services? If Apple takes 50% off the top, does that mean all participating publishers get some small slice of the remaining $5/mo. per subscriber? That would be a rather huge hit financially, and would require a substantial increase in the subscriber base to come out even or make profit over the older model. Apparently NYT and WaPo didn't bite.
When I buy a novel the bookstore learns nothing about me. When I buy comic books the retailer learns nothing about me. When I used to have my newspaper delivered (yes... I’m old!), the newspaper printer learned nothing about me. When I buy magazines the retailer learns nothing about me.
For literally hundreds and hundreds of years, published works have been enjoyed by umpteen billions of people WITHOUT THE PUBLISHER DATA MINING THE CONSUMER.
It is absolutely disgusting (in my eyes) that now “but I can’t creep on your information, that you have no interest in sharing with me” would be an argument that anyone would consider even remotely reasonable or valid.
If you get something for FREE (Facebook, et al), you could reasonably expect them to “pay themselves” by helping themselves to all the information they can glean...
However, if you actually PAY for a service- in what world should you also let them cyber stalk you & try to extract more cash from you??
That is an interesting idea. While I prefer the model of unlimited access to the content of participating publishers, your pay per article idea might be more acceptable to a larger number of publishers. I still wouldn't like having to do it on a site by site basis (giving my credit card info to a dozen different newspapers) but Apple could easily facilitate letting me search for articles of interest across all the participating publishers and maybe even giving me the first 1 or 2 paragraphs free (like a preview of a song on iTunes). I could then click to read whatever articles I want and let Apple handle the billing and payments to the publisher. Apple could even set it up on a "credit" or "token" system where I pay $10 for 100 credits then each publisher could decide whether to charge 1, 2, 3 credits on an article by article basis depending on its length, quality, etc.
Like you, I also would prefer to do this through Apple for data privacy issues.
The NYT is perhaps a different animal, but for others NOT adopting the Apple News model will for certain mean FEWER digital dollars for Newspapers/Magazines.
A big reason that Newspapers have been failing in droves in the last 10 years is because they have failed to adapt to new paradigms of the internet age.
Newspaper companies cite the paradox in the digital subscription model, because it inherently pilfering sales from print subscriptions, but this is short sited. Newspaper digital subscription services have never been a huge profit driver on their own merit.
One of the best practices I have seen is when Newspapers/Magazines include the digital access free with a print subscription. This is a great way to reward print subscribers and allow them to reap the benefits of the digital age. Newspapers/Magazines can continue to offer free access for print subscribers, as well as sell digital subscriptions (on their own), AND do the Apple News service without hurting their overall bottom line.
I hope the Apple News service success.
A big reason that Newspapers have been failing in droves in the last 10 years is because they have failed to adapt to new paradigms of the internet age.
Newspaper companies cite the paradox in the digital subscription model, because it inherently pilfering sales from print subscriptions, but this is short sited. Newspaper digital subscription services have never been a huge profit driver on their own merit.
One of the best practices I have seen is when Newspapers/Magazines include the digital access free with a print subscription. This is a great way to reward print subscribers and allow them to reap the benefits of the digital age. Newspapers/Magazines can continue to offer free access for print subscribers, as well as sell digital subscriptions (on their own), AND do the Apple News service without hurting their overall bottom line.
I hope the Apple News service success.
Anything delivered to your house, the retailer was able to sell off your information, that's why you got all of those mailed catalogs for decades. Anything paid with a credit card, the same deal. But I agree that Apple not giving away your details is a prized feature.
Even in 1980, if they had your address, they had a wealth of information, just knowing the demographics and average income of your neighborhood was valuable.
I think it is very fair. If I read only one WSJ article, the WSJ made a sale. If I lose interest in the articles, I'm not charged anything as I have not consumed anything. The whole thing about how it works now is like the old cable TV idea. I don't like WSJ enough to want everything they do. But that's not to say that I don't find anything they write interesting. Some of it is. And it could help the publishers focus more on what people actually consume.
But the nyt isn’t going to get on board. So I’m not understanding your logic. Now if they were as well as most local papers. Sign me up. But this isn’t that. The wsj is a welcome surprise but I already get that free. Guess we’ll see who else.
I understand his point as a counter to the many posters saying that no one would pay for news when the fact is that millions of people do. Add up all of the majors and it's a very big market. The more of these majors you bring it, the easier it'll be to sell.
What remains to be seen is whether the content from major providers is "selected content" or equivalent to the serviced they offer now. I'm pretty sure it's going to be just selected, as it would just cannibalize way too much of a publisher's revenue. This $10 model is $10 for *everyone*. How much does WSJ get? I can't imagine that it's more than $1.
The point of my post was to ask what gains do you get as a publisher. In this modern age, the whole idea of campaigning is to promote content to a targeted audience. With the way this is setup, only the publishers that are seeking purely for +1 visitors would benefit from this deal. Obviously as a consumer, we would prefer to be completely private.
I know it's too much to expect, but if they partnered with The Information in any capacity, it'd be remarkable.
I'm already paying $40 a month for that single news site, having that in addition to other sites without having to worry about ads would be great.
I'm already paying $40 a month for that single news site, having that in addition to other sites without having to worry about ads would be great.
We'll probably never know but I would be curious if NYT and WP would have been more agreeable if Apple backed off the 50% subscription deal. That deal sounds absurd to me and I'm not surprised that the most popular news outlets want nothing to do with it.
Frankly for me without the NYT and WP this service is dead on arrival.
Frankly for me without the NYT and WP this service is dead on arrival.
We have an answer: https://9to5mac.com/2019/03/24/wsj-tim-cook-services/
The News subscription will also cost $9.99 a month and will feature more than 200 magazines and content from newspapers including The Wall Street Journal. The available Journal content will include general ‘news, politics and lifestyle’ but business and finance news will be de-prioritized. The Journal is apparently hiring more reporters to feed content into the Apple News offering.
What is the point of WSJ content if the heart of their reporting will be excised.