Peter Kafka
The Wall Street Journal’s Peter Kafka reports that the Hearst news organization, which is about to sell its digital magazines via Amazon’s new tablet, is now selling more than 300,000 paid digital downloads per month.
So what does that mean? Because digital numbers aren’t uniformly reported yet, it’s a little hard to figure how that compares to the rest of the industry. Read more on this from the WSJ’s All Things Digital blog here.
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But one thing that is clear is that the future of digital journalism isn’t necessarily only going to mean news for free. People are willing to pay for their news – particularly those who understand that a quality news product takes labor to produce, even in digital form.
Essentially, the paywall model can work. Whether it can become a burgeoning revenue stream that can subsidize a print business model is another matter.
But what Hearst likely is discovering is that by offering digital subscriptions, they can open up the markets outside their papers’ geographic circulation areas. Can’t afford to pay print delivery drivers to sit on the Tappan Zee Bridge all day? Don’t bother. Market your online product over the river and bank on slow growth.
This is a clear sign for newspaper publishers who haven’t accepted the unpleasant reality that it might someday be too expensive to print news on paper and then drive it out to tens of thousands of doorsteps every day. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel…
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