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The Wisconsin State Journal, published by Madison Newspapers Inc., has launched its first tablet edition today. The app is free to download but requires a paid subscription to get beyond the headlines.
The newspaper has taken a unique approach to charging for the app's content. The app opens up to a look fairly similar to other native designed newspaper apps: a NYT look where the content is fed in through RSS feeds. At first blush the app looks like you would be able to read the content for free. But tapping on an article immediately produces a pop-up which informs you that you must buy a subscription: $3.99 per month, $21.99 for six months, or $39.99 per year. A home delivered subscription would cost you $65 according to the paper's website.
Additionally, the pop-up says that an additional month will be added onto your subscription term if you click "allow" when asked if it will be fine to have Apple share your basic account data. (click at left for enlarged screenshot)
This is one approach to getting customer data – the other being a direct request for information in the form of a customer survey within the app's content.
One major thing missing, however, is a way for current print subscribers to get access to the app for free. This is a strange features to be missing, and will no doubt make a number of the paper's subscribers pretty unhappy – after all, this is the home to the University of Madison, and I would guess that a good number of State Journal readers are iPad owners.
On the other hand, it is possible that this was a strategic decision on the part of the publisher to drive iPad owners towards a digital edition. If not, oops.
As for the actual app: I did not end up buying a subscription as I am not a local resident of Madison and it certainly looks like the paper's content is not very relevant to me. But I certainly would be interested to know what residents think of the app and the subscription policy. So far, however, there are no reviews inside the App Store.
Final note: the newspaper currently has a link promoting its iPad app. It takes you to the iTunes store directly, not to a promotional page on the paper's website. This is fine because the developer wrote a pretty good app description which spells out the subscription plans. The support page in the App Store, however, takes you to a complete irrelevant web page – this will have to be fixed. I mention all this both to point out the good app description, but also because I was trying hard to figure out if the publisher is trying to explain why they are charging all iPad owners for content access, even their print subscribers.
Friday, May 6, 2011
Wisconsin State Journal launches tablet edition that requires subscription, gives incentive for opt-in data
The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing; editors at the NYT confused by the latest economic data
The editors at the Times are having few problems deciding today if the economy is gaining steam or slowing down - such is the conflicting news on the economy.
For while the editors have splashed the news about a decent hiring report as the lead on its website, buried inside in the business and opinion sections are additional articles that tell the opposite story.
Paul Krugman's column today expresses doubts about any recovery, for instance.
"From G.D.P. to private-sector payrolls, from business surveys to new claims for unemployment insurance, key economic indicators suggest that the recovery may be sputtering," Krugman writes, adding "And it wasn’t much of a recovery to start with."
Krugman's problem with the state of things is that he does not see much emphasis on job creation, while he sees an overemphasis on inflation fear mongering.
"What does Washington currently fear? Topping the list is fear that budget deficits will cause a fiscal crisis any day now. In fact, a number of people — like Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the co-chairmen of President Obama’s debt commission — have settled on a specific time frame: terrible things will happen within two years unless we make drastic spending cuts," Krugman writes.
Well, I am sure that there are opposing views, but it is interesting to note that the editors of the news pages don't seem to be reading the columns by their economics columnist.
Morning Brief: Commodity prices fall as investors fear worsening recession; RIM says 'Amateur hour is over'
The latest jobless claim numbers were surely a sign to many investors that their hopes that a strengthening economy would increase demand were going to be in vain, as a result many starting dumping their holdings in commodities, driving down the price of oil, silver, sugar and coffee. The price of oil, for instance, fell below $100 for the first time in two months.
“Pop goes the bubble,” Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research, was quoted in the New York Times.
Jobless claims grew by 43,000 to 474,000 in the last reporting week, a sign that the economy continues to struggle. Another factor weighing on commodity prices were comments made by the head of the European Central Bank who stated that interest rates overseas would not be rising until later this year, leading to a weakening of the Euro. This lead to gains by the dollar, forcing down the price of many commodities priced in dollars.
(This morning, however, the Labor Department reported that the economy added 244,000 new jobs – a pretty strong report.)
So what does this mean for ad dollars here in the States. My own contacts have been telling me that the ad picture has gotten more and more gloomy as oil prices have risen, in part because some producers, such as food, are so sensitive to transportation costs. As a result, ad budgets were being tightened in response. Any move downward in oil prices would be considered helpful in easing fears among executives thus preventing further cuts to marketing budgets.
In any case, 2011, which has shown modest to healthy revenue recovery for some consumer publishers has been at risk lately. B2B publishers, meanwhile, continue to see very little growth. The Q2 numbers will be a very important indicator for whether the year as a whole will be a good one.
Speaking of advertising: have you see this ad on the NYT website?
I don't know what the headline is referring to, do you? But the ad itself is pretty cool. The ad opens up to a fullscreen shot and is very inspired by, if I should say, iPad design. Ironic, huh?
In any case, RIM is spending big dollars trying to tramp down all the bad reviews it has received for its BlackBerry PlayBook. I could say that it won't work, but, you know, I am a big believer in advertising!
Most of yesterday was spent trying to get my iPad to work properly. Any attempt to back-up the device after being plugged into my computer failed. This system failure has never occurred before and began to happen immediately following two events: the installation of iOS 4.3.3 and my downloading the latest version of Adobe Creative Suite (5.5, which I have not opened up yet).
Restoring my iPad did not solve the problem so I began to look elsewhere for a cause. That was when another symptom appeared: my Time Machine back-ups to an external hard drive were also failing. One wouldn't think that the two things would be related but it turns out that they were. (At first I thought that the external hard drive was failing, but I could read and write to the drive with no problem. But any attempt to delete a file there literally took hours to accomplish.)
I was very close to reinstalling my Mac OS, something that I really didn't want to do, when I came upon an online chat between two people who were discussing a solution to his Time Machine woes. The online conversation turned to doing this: turning off Time Machine, switching the back-up drive to "none", and reformatting the external hard drive – then turn TM back on. Voila!
What was the problem? Probably a corrupt file in the Time Machine back-up folder. Starting from scratch was like unplugging a drain. Once that occurred my computer could deal with back-ups, in general. Strangely, though, I wasn't experiencing any problems with my iPhone back-ups.
Update: Ugh! My iPad problems continue. Clearly this is an iOS issue since this problems started with the last update, and now I know my computer is functioning fine.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Publishers need to be aware of App Store best practices including good app descriptions and screenshots.
In between battles with my iPad this morning and afternoon, I downloaded a few new apps that I thought I might want to take a look at. One of them, Mining Weekly e-magazine, I downloaded simply because I have a soft spot in my heart for B2B magazines, there being so few of them in the App Store.
Unfortunately, this new app from Creamer Media International, the South African publisher of this magazines, as well as Engineering News, is simply a replica edition with some embedded audio and video. The free app is the first from the company and is actually not an issue but a reproduction of a special section the publisher produced for an event that took place in early March.
So if there is not much to learn from the app itself there are some things that immediately struck me about the app description inside the App Store.
Take, for instance, the app description itself:
Mining Weekly e-magazine.That's it, including the lack of a period at the end of that second line.
Featuring mining activity worldwide
Now if you are one of those media executives that has not been personally involved in launching an app, or if your company has not, the process of getting an app into the store is very simple (even I did it, after all), even if the app approval process is less opaque.
As part of submitting the app one needs to fill out the app description, select categories, etc. The good news is that this information can be revised as often as you would like (though the updated copy will not appear immediately in the App Store).
So it is very possible that the publisher of this particular app, now that it is live in the App Store, may well go back into their account and redo their app description. Tomorrow you might see a virtual novel used as the app description.
But there are other things other than just copy to consider, as well. For instance, in the iTunes App Store only the first few lines of the description appear before the "More" appears, forcing the reader to click it to reveal more about the app. There are developers who are very adept at making sure those few lines, three to be exact, sing. (In the App Store as seen on the iPad, the first five lines appear, and on the iPhone the whole description appears!)
Then there are the screenshots: here the publisher included only one, the cover. Three should be considered the bare minimum, but there things to consider other than simply the number. For instance, does your app include radically different layouts in portrait and landscape, then you would want to include screenshots of the app in both orientations. Are there multimedia elements you want to point out like video or unique animation, etc.
For those developers who have experience at this sort of thing this is all first grade stuff – I hope I didn't insult your intelligence with this stuff.
But I wonder how many media managers are delegating these decisions, leaving it up to the developers. At the very least these things should be brought up in conversations with the team that is handling the App Store account. I doubt there are any publishers out there that would launch a magazine without looking at the first promotional material, the media kit, etc. An app launch should be no different.
The Telegraph iPad update converts current app from free to one requiring a paid subscription for non-print buyers
Today The Telegraph updated its iPad app, turning the same designed app from a free one to paid. No doubt some savvy iPad owners will simply bypass the app update and continue with their "Best of The Telegraph" app to continue to receive content free of charge.
The Telegraph for iPad remains a free app, but now the publishers are requiring that readers pony up for the privilege of reading that day's paper. Individual editions will cost £1.19 ($1.99 in the US App Store) or £9.99 for a self-renewing monthly subscription ($16.99 US).
For print subscribers, however, there is good news as they will be able to sign into their accounts to access the content free of any additional charges.
So what has The Telegraph added to this update to make it worth paying for?
What's New in Version 2.0UK iPad owners don't appear to be buying into the plan, however, as the reviews are universally negative. But I suppose this is to be expected: one day you're getting something for free, the next you are required to pay for it. (To be fair, there are some minor changes in the newly updated app involving design and typography.)
- Greater depth of content including video, picture galleries, graphics and cartoon archives.
- Quick and Cryptic interactive crosswords.
- 30-day archive.
- Night-reading mode.
But the mistake here was probably in launching a free app to begin with, not in trying to charge for content. At £9.99 a month for the iPad edition, this does represent a nice discount off the price of a home delivered subscription price currently offered on the paper's website of £6.60 a week.
So what would I do? Probably the same as The Telegraph's publisher, only I would have tried to make it seem like the newspaper really did upgrade the app. Maybe a nice introductory video from the queen perhaps?
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The web, mobile and tablets may all be 'digital', but they are still not exactly the same medium
My iPad is currently being "restored" – what a pain. So my look at the new app from The Telegraph may have to wait awhile. In the meantime, I was thinking about what it means to have "digital" media experience, and is it really relevant to some of today's publishing challenges.
Imagine for a second that you were about to launch a new daily newspaper in NYC. What an enormous project, right? To get things started you decide to hire a new publisher, so you begin the interview process. After talking to lots of candidates you make your choice: you have decided to bring on the former publisher of a city/regional magazine. Your reason for the hire? The person has "print" experience.
Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, right? Well, that is because having "print" experience is not the same thing as having metro daily newspaper experience. "Print" is a generic term for a very large segment of the media industry.
So what does it mean to have "digital" experience? Sadly, many media executives are lumping all digital media together as if experience with the web is the same as mobile or tablets. As a result, many of the new digital products being produced are simply porting over the web – both in content and publishing philosophy – into the new platforms without considering that not all digital platforms are the same.
Additionally, not all print mediums treat the web the same way, so why wouldn't they treat mobile and tablet platforms differently as well? For instance, a newspaper's website mirrors its print product pretty exactly, if only temporarily. Both display the most important stories that the editors rank highest at that moment. A lead story in the print edition will definitely be the lead story online, if only for a few moments at least.
But do magazine publishers treat their websites as exact copies of their print editions? Not necessarily. A magazine may consider its interview with Tom Hanks, for instance, as their lead print story, while going with something more current and newsworthly online, saving the celebrity interview for print only.
Handing over the creation of a tablet publication to someone you think has "digital" experience may mean handing over the job to someone who has only thought "web". The result is that many new tablet apps are basically new ways to read the product's website. They are, in essence, replica editions of the web.
What I find fascinating about mobile and tablets are that they are both new territories for exploration by media companies, yet they are most assuredly unique products, deserving their own consideration. Yet there continues to be a tendency by many publishers to frustratingly demand that only the device has changed, the content or its presentation need not change. This mistake is being made just as often by "digital" people as it is "print" people.
I think this explains the outright resistance many digital media gurus have had to creating tablet editions. These media writers have become as wedded to the web the way some some people have accused editors and publishers of being too print oriented. What is that old phrase about the pot calling the kettle ...
Here is an interview with Matthew Carlson, principal of experience strategy and design at Hot Studio Inc., that appeared yesterday on the O'Reilly Media area of the Forbes website.
There is much here I agree with – but I also find it interesting that Carlson points to new tablet products that are really, in essence, new ways to package web content. In the end, I think Flipboard and Zite will influence web design far more than they will tablet "magazines". Why? Because a true magazine is the product of a publishing vision (like that of Hoodgrown, seen above), not an aggregation of content. I think there is room on tablets for both kinds of products, and more.
