Beginning Oct. 24, the WSJ Mobile Reader application, currently available on BlackBerry smartphones and Apple iPhone and iPod touch devices, will require a separate mobile subscription for full access to Journal subscription content. The application itself will remain free to download and contain both free and subscription content, emulating the experience found on WSJ.com.
WSJ, you’re doing this all wrong.
Democrats hold considerably more positive views than Republicans of CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times and the news operations of the broadcast networks, and their views of National Public Radio are somewhat more favorable than those of Republicans. By contrast, views of Fox News – and to a lesser extent The Wall Street Journal – are more positive among Republicans than Democrats.
Earlier today, the site MacJournals recommended TUAW’s coverage of Apple’s “It’s Only Rock and Roll” media event to their readers via Twitter. A few hours later, they followed up with this:
We wouldn’t have recommended TUAW liveblog coverage had we known how vicious it would be. We’ll know for the future.
This didn’t go over well with TUAW. Here’s the crux of MacJournal’s reasoning:
However, we found today’s coverage viciously unaware and unsympathetic of anything beyond TUAW’s own narrow view of the technology world. TUAW aggressively dismissed anything that wasn’t a new product announcement, said that Apple’s failure to meet false rumors were “legitimate complaints,” and provided no context for why anyone should have believed any of the rumors other than the fact that they were actual rumors.
Last week, the Newspaper Association of America posted the quarterly financial data of the U.S. newspaper industry. It tracks both print and online revenues for the industry as a whole. But unlike past updates, the NAA did not promote these numbers. When you look at them, it’s easy to see why.
In Q2 2009, newspapers made $6.8 billion in print and online revenues. In the same quarter last year, the newspapers made $9.6 billion, a nearly $3 billion difference in the span of a year, or a full 29% from 2008 to 2009.
Gizmodo has published a collection of photos showing the various retail boxes OS X has come packaged in over the last 8 year.
With the release of 10.6 this Friday, Apple is going to be taking a big step away from the “X” themed boxes. Instead, the Snow Leopard retail box features, well, a snow leopard.
Gizmodo complains about this:
I can haz clip art? Come on, Apple. What’s wrong with you?
From WMCTV Channel 5, here in Memphis:
In Tennessee, The Chattanooga Times Free Press has been setting aside more space for local news and puts all national news through a community lens, says publisher and executive editor Tom Griscom. The newspaper has a weekday circulation of about 73,000.
Griscon says if people “really want to read about the Iraq war every day, you are not going to buy our paper. You will buy The New York Times.”
CBS Corp. saw its profit all but wiped out in the second quarter, as the recession continued to eat into advertising revenue across its TV, radio and outdoor-billboard businesses.
The New York media company relies heavily on advertising, especially at its broadcast-TV network. Television ad revenue fall 13% in the quarter, to $1.15 billion, from a year earlier, even though CBS has been the only one of the four biggest U.S. TV networks to increase its prime-time audience this season.
But I say he’s very much wrong that charging readers for access to news is a credible solution. It would just make things worse. If the Times and/or Post were to erect a pay wall, I see things playing out as follows: they lose most of their readers; ad revenue declines accordingly; the revenue they make from readers who do pay won’t even make up for the lost ad revenue; and so by switching from free to paid access they’d actually sink further into the red.
A friend sent me this link this week. It details an email conversation between Gizmodo and Jason Scott about Gizmodo’s recent 1979 feature. Here’s how Gizmodos intern Don Nguyen started the conversation:
We are currently working on features about technology thirty years ago, and one of the issues we want to look in to is the state of pornography on BBS ‘networks’ in 1979 and the very early 1980s. I came across your great documentary about BBS, and was wondering if there is any information you could provide us with that would help for the article.
Between the laughs, Jon Stewart and Brian Williams make some good points about the news industry.
Walter Cronkite passed away this evening at the age of 92. Time has a photo essay up of his life’s work — bringing the news to millions of American families, night after night. He will be missed.
Didn’t Apple pull out of Macworld? The NY Times seems to have missed the memo:
Next February, when Steven P. Jobs — knock on wood — does his big reveal at Macworld, the geegaw people will most want to see probably won’t be on display.
Whoops.