
Apple News Service Said to Feature WSJ for $10 a month, Without NYT or WP - l9k
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/20/technology/apple-news-wall-street-journal.html
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tptacek
Broken record: online newspaper subscriptions are super cheap and are
remarkably useful; when you can click around a newspaper site without popups,
it starts to makes sense to use them as your news portal, which quickly weans
you off lower-quality free sites like CNN.

Like the people that get the sleep apnea devices and won't shut up about how
much better their life is, I'm constantly (and noisily) surprised by how
shitty the news writing and presentation I was putting up with was before I
subscribed to a bunch of actual newspapers.

~~~
ac29
I suppose "super cheap" is relative:

WSJ: $100-$150/year

WP: $187/year

NYT: $195/year

All of these seem to be promotional rates of some sort, or I lucked out and
they're all on sale (unlikely).

So, that puts them at or above the cost of a TV or Music streaming
subscription. If you're subscribing to "a bunch", that's pretty expensive.

edit: I should add, I believe all of these prices are a "with ads" price,
which arguably makes them a worse value than an ad-free streaming subscription
of equal price.

~~~
bArray
Those prices are ridiculous, especially in a time where we should be consuming
news from a greater number of different resources, not a select few. I
understand that journalists need to be paid, but this is well above and beyond
- this is to feed the investors.

I remember hearing that the majority/average person in the US doesn't have
$400 spare for an emergency, how on earth are they expected to be able to
consume "better" media on this business model? And of course this would
encourage those papers to produce material that supports the views of the
people who are able to consume it, only further adding to social divides.

~~~
throwawaymath
_> Those prices are ridiculous, especially in a time where we should be
consuming news from a greater number of different resources, not a select
few._

Leaving aside the comment about pricing, how do you consume more varied news
than those "select few"? I read The Economist, NYT and WSJ every morning.
Reading several articles (often on the same topic) across all three takes me
about an hour. For a while I was trying to read Foreign Policy too but there's
just not enough time.

I can only do this because I commute into the city on a relatively quiet train
ride. I can't imagine adding another news source to this routine, let alone a
bunch of them. What would you do, have a Monday set of sources, a Tuesday set
and so on?

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GeekyBear
It's worth noting that Apple did not create the "50% revenue share" business
model behind the Texture app they bought.

The big names in magazine publishing who created Texture did.

>New York, NY, December 8, 2009 – Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News
Corporation and Time Inc. today jointly announced that they have entered into
an independent venture to develop open standards for a new digital storefront
and related technology that will allow consumers to enjoy their favorite media
content on portable digital devices.

[http://allthingsd.com/20091208/nows-the-time-finally-
publish...](http://allthingsd.com/20091208/nows-the-time-finally-publishers-
announce-their-hulu-for-magazines-next-up-building-it/)

As for their revenue model.

>That service, which was eventually called Texture, paid out 10 percent of its
monthly revenue to its owner-operators, who divvied it up based on the usage
their titles generated. And publishers who sold their stuff through the
service but didn’t own a piece of Texture captured 50 percent of the revenue,
also cut up by usage.

[https://www.recode.net/2019/2/13/18224013/apple-news-
publish...](https://www.recode.net/2019/2/13/18224013/apple-news-
publishers-50-percent-subscription-explained-new-york-times-washington-post-
texture)

Apparently the magazine industry and the newspaper industry have different
ideas on what a equitable revenue share might be.

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untog
I'm confused why WSJ, of all publications, is jumping on board here. A look at
their subscription page shows me that the cheapest option is $15 a month. This
Apple News subscription product is going to be $10 a month _and_ Apple is
taking 50% of that.

I get the argument that Apple News will expose you to a much larger audience,
but that level of revenue cut is... significant. Why wouldn't I cancel my WSJ
subscription and sign up with Apple?

(an aside, but the 50% cut just seems absurd. Just reads like Apple saying
"because we can", there's no way the cost of distributing an article is
anywhere near the same as the cost of making it)

~~~
6gvONxR4sf7o
Worth noting that after the first year, that $15/mo turns into $40/mo (which
is when I cancelled my subscription).

~~~
natch
This is why I don’t sign up to pay even at sites I would like to support. It’s
very hard to tell how much I would end up paying after the trial. Yes it’s all
there in black and white (or gray on gray) in fine print somewhere. I just
don’t trust myself to get reading that stuff right and I resent they require
such vigilance, so I don’t want to reward it.

It’s not that I would never pay, either. I do pay contributions to some sites
where the amount stays fixed, such as a monthly recurring donation to
Wikipedia.

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esun
Former newspaper industry employee here... This is a mistake by the WSJ. They
would be better served by reducing their ridiculous digital subscription fees
and skipping Apple's extortionate gatekeeping "service".

The newspaper industry was founded on (although nobody really understood it
until the invention of the internet) being the intermediary between consumers
and companies. In 2019 the business has changed to content provision. But
these old line companies (and who is older line than Apple and the WSJ?) can't
help but try to discover intermediary points of control.

Pah.

~~~
sneeze-slayer
The WSJ online costs $39 per month, but the print copy costs $43 per month.
It's pretty crazy, because I would expect the physical paper to cost much more
than the online version.

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snazz
I find it amusing that the NYT is reporting on its own business decisions.

~~~
reaperducer
It would be criticized if it didn’t.

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Traster
I think it's so important that we move towards a model where we can subscribe
to a selection of news sources for a reasonable amount. As others have pointed
out, individual newspapers are as much as a netflix or spotify subscription -
which may be justified. But even if everyone does move to a subscription
model, it's bad for our society for everyone to have 1 source of news.

It's even more unhealthy if I can't have an informed discussion about the news
of the day with you because you got your news from the NYT and I got my news
from Times of London and we got two entirely different sides of the story _and
we can 't go and see each other's sources of information_. That sounds to me
like a terrible situation to put ourselves in.

I would much rather pay $10 bucks a month and know that that revenue is
distributed amongst the papers I read in proportion to how long I've spent
reading each article- in exactly the same way Youtube tracks watched minutes.

~~~
tzs
> It's even more unhealthy if I can't have an informed discussion about the
> news of the day with you because you got your news from the NYT and I got my
> news from Times of London and we got two entirely different sides of the
> story and we can't go and see each other's sources of information

Probably not the best example. With the NYT and the Times of London, you might
get different perspectives on a news story (as opposed to an opinion piece),
but they will both be mostly correct. You should be able to have informed
discussion.

To make your example work, you need something more like an AlterNet reader
trying to have an informed discussion with an InfoWars reader.

~~~
acct1771
Careful with that appeal to authority.

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ohnope
>the most recent terms that Apple is offering to publishers ask for a cut of
roughly half of the subscription revenue involved in the service

50% cut? And likely no access to customer data, with content embedded in a
proprietary app outside of a news paper’s control... why would publishers
agree to shutting off so many avenues for future innovation and strategic
independence?

~~~
52-6F-62
Apple News does provide analytics, just not user-profile derived data. It’s
more general than that, but is available across categories like loyalty
metrics, vague demographics, etc—without associating that information to
specific users.

But you’ll have to investigate for yourself if you’d like to know more since I
don’t work or speak for them and just have some personal experience.

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intopieces
Note to those not keen on paying money to Apple for this service: RBDigital
lets you download lots of magazines through your local library. Mine even has
The Economist. I still pay for a subscription because I like the audio, but
RBDigital is great for people who like plain PDF scans of magazines and has
the added benefit of being already paid for.

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steven2012
> Publishers are also concerned that they won’t have access to important data
> about the consumers — credit cards, email addresses and other subscriber
> information — as part of the deal.

Why are credit card numbers important information? All they would know is what
the credit card is, but it's not like they can sell the credit card or use
that number to get more purchases, etc, from that number, can they?

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bearcobra
As a former Next Issue/Texture user I really hope they’re going to do a better
job with the UX. I really loved the idea of an unlimited magazine subscription
but the execution just wasn’t there.

~~~
joegahona
Same. I _recently_ checked out Texture again, having tried Next Issue years
ago, and I was shocked that the UX seemed to be exactly the same. No movement
in years! Still takes ages to download a magazine, still incredibly clunky to
navigate. The whole thing feels years behind everything else.

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sdfsdfsdfsdf3
I wonder for WSJ if you still have to call a high pressure sales line to
cancel?

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sqldba
What confuses me most here is that the ethics of the WSJ, as defined by the
beliefs of owner Rupert Murdoch, run counter to everything Apple professes to
support. I don't know why they would support WSJ and not a more unbiased
newspaper.

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crazygringo
A 50% cut seems _insane_. Is there context that's missing here?

Because also, nothing is said about how the subscription is divvied up. Is the
remaining 50% ($5/mo.) split among publishers by the % of articles read?

~~~
joegahona
It’s time spent with the publisher’s content.

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alg0rith
>Netflix deliver large video streams $12.99/month

>Apple News host a bunch of text and some images $10.00

Is it fair?

