This survey teaches us that people are moving from print to their tablet devices, in this case the IPad to read the news. But what is a little suspicious is that it claims that people are dropping their print subscriptions at an alarming rate- if they spend more than an hour a day reading news on their IPad.  And out of the 1,600 people surveyed they never actually say how many spend an hour a day reading news on their IPad.

From AdWeek. Full story here

Are iPad Apps Killing Newspapers? Survey Says…

Apple tablet–using respondents canceling paper subscriptions at alarming rate

Dec 9, 2010

- Lucia Moses

Are iPad apps the new newspaper killer? A new survey out today showed that print newspaper subscribers who are heavy iPad users are “very likely” to cancel their print subscriptions.
 
The survey by the University of Missouri’s Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute is one of the first deep dives into how people are consuming news content on the eight-month-old device and its potential impact on print readership.
 
RJI gathered responses from more than 1,600 iPad users online from September to November.
 
The survey showed that 58 percent of respondents who use the Apple tablet at least an hour a day for news are very likely to cancel their subscription in the next six months. One in 10 said they had already done so and have switched to reading digital newspapers on their iPad.
 
A potential positive finding for newspapers as they try to charge people for their digital content is, nine in 10 said they were likely to use newspapers’ apps to get news, rather than using a Web browser to go to the papers’ Web sites, most of which are free.
 
“These findings are encouraging for newspaper publishers who plan to begin charging for subscriptions on their iPad app editions early next year, but our survey also found a potential downside: iPad news apps may diminish newspaper print subscriptions in 2011," said Roger Fidler, RJI’s program director for digital publishing.
 
In a separate survey released today, GfK MRI found about equal amounts of adults reading newspapers and magazines via apps or mobile devices. Four percent of adults reported reading a newspaper via an app in the past 30 days, compared with 3.7 percent of adults reading magazine content this way.

Synapse will begin selling magazine subscriptions for magazines through Facebook and associated article links in Facebooks' news feed. Good idea but will people pay for a subscription when they can read the articles they are most interested in at no cost via Facebook already? Until publications restrict access to content, seems likely efforts like this will fall flat.

Magazines to Sell Subscriptions Within Facebook's News Feed

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- The magazine business may soon have a way to do more with Facebook than engage fans and promote its brands. A mockup of an expanded article running in Facebook's news feed, using InStyle as an example. A mockup of an expanded article running in Facebook's news feed, using InStyle as an example. Synapse, a Time Inc. division that sells subscriptions for many publishers, is collaborating with Alvenda, a company that builds e-commerce applications, to introduce a system letting Facebook users buy print magazine subscriptions without leaving the site or even the Facebook news feed. The system, which Alvenda expects to make live in July or August, will also allow Facebook users to expand those blurbs of magazine content that are now common in the news feed into full articles, complete with advertising -- again without leaving the news feed, much less Facebook itself.

Full story here

 

From PaidContent.org. Read Full story here.

Newspapers adopting the NPR model or soliciting donations to help pay for content or programming is one that has been floated a lot recently. This story in PaidContent.org talks about the Miami Herald's efforts. I have a theory on why this will not work, ever- unfortunately, it appears to be hard-wired into the American population's psyche to hate their local newspaper. No one seems to ever appreciate their local newspaper, instead they see the flaws all too clearly, overlooking everything else. Before newspapers can get people to make donations above the subscription prices, they are going to need to figure out a way to get some love from the hometown fans.

The Inside Word is a weekly feature that looks at compelling industry debates and discussions unfolding on the blogs of employees at digital-media companies.

Blogger: Steve Outing

Position: Founder of the Digital Media Test Kitchen at the University of Colorado’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication and former columnist at the now defunct Editor and Publisher

Blog name: Steve Outing

Backstory: In December, The Miami Herald added a link to the end of all of the stories on its web site inviting readers to make a donation via credit card to “support ongoing news coverage;” Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal said the experiment has “elicited an encouraging steam of gifts, ranging from $2 to $55.”

Blog post: But Outing says the Herald is taking the wrong approach, calling it unsophisticated. “How about instead tracking frequent readers, and presenting them with a donation pitch after they’ve read a number of articles?” He also suggested donation package options that could include gifts, a la NPR.

Post-script: But when I talked with him, he was even more bullish about a different tack, suggesting that newspapers themselves shouldn’t even be involved directly in the soliciting of money. Rather, he thinks papers should join a third-party service like Kachingle or the now out-of-business Contenture, where newspaper fans could potentially set aside a certain amount of money each month and then can allocate it among their favorite sites.

Outing said that because traditional newspapers are for profit-enterprises they face “pushback” from readers who will wonder “why is this giant corporation begging for money” if they solicit donations directly. Also, it’s likely that visitors who appreciate online news won’t want to allocate all of their free cash to just one for-profit site. “I don’t think this is going to save the news industry by any means, but if one of those (services) really takes off, that could get pretty interesting,” he said.

The New York Times says it will decide this summer whether to offer online content through a subscription model, metered model or a pay as you go micro-payment model. Full story here.

One thing is clear, it is going to start costing money to read the New York Times online. Hopefully, more publications will follow and begin charging for the content that is so expensive to produce. As we have said before, the model, so pervasive among newspapers and magazines that traffic generates revenue, isn't working.