Pulp friction
How much are you prepared to pay for a newspaper? Simon Kelner, editor of The Independent, thinks readers would be happy to pay £1 for a daily and £2 for a Sunday. It would have to be a mighty fine product to persuade me that this is anything more than pulp fiction. Most journalists get their newspapers and magazines for free in the office so it comes as a shock when they actually have to pay for one themselves.
This morning I bought a few nationals, the London Evening Standard, Vogue and The Economist. If I had wanted to cut back, the dailies would have been first to go (I can get most of it free on the web) and, perhaps, I would have junked The Economist - £3.10 seems a bit steep. That would have left me with Vogue, the most expensive of the lot at £3.40. Why? First, it's a beautiful magazine with a few decent articles. Second, it doesn't and will never translate on the web - see what I mean?! Third, it keeps forever, doesn't turn yellow, or give the living room that hobo at home look. Yep, it's what our marketing chums call a premium product - so maybe Kelner might be on to something after all.
As Wired put it a while back: "Imagine what higher-ups at the Post must have thought when focus-group participants declared they wouldn't accept a Washington Post subscription even if it were free. The main reason (and I'm not making this up): They didn't like the idea of old newspapers piling up in their houses."
However, Peter Wilby in today's Standard, refuses to be pessimistic about newspapers. "Newspapers have strong brands and may will establish them online, as The Guardian, particulary, has done. Perhaps the web will eventually become a newspaper's main medium, with the printed version surviving as a niche luxury, rather like a leather-bound book."
But the question remains: how much would readers be prepared to pay for it?
This morning I bought a few nationals, the London Evening Standard, Vogue and The Economist. If I had wanted to cut back, the dailies would have been first to go (I can get most of it free on the web) and, perhaps, I would have junked The Economist - £3.10 seems a bit steep. That would have left me with Vogue, the most expensive of the lot at £3.40. Why? First, it's a beautiful magazine with a few decent articles. Second, it doesn't and will never translate on the web - see what I mean?! Third, it keeps forever, doesn't turn yellow, or give the living room that hobo at home look. Yep, it's what our marketing chums call a premium product - so maybe Kelner might be on to something after all.
As Wired put it a while back: "Imagine what higher-ups at the Post must have thought when focus-group participants declared they wouldn't accept a Washington Post subscription even if it were free. The main reason (and I'm not making this up): They didn't like the idea of old newspapers piling up in their houses."
However, Peter Wilby in today's Standard, refuses to be pessimistic about newspapers. "Newspapers have strong brands and may will establish them online, as The Guardian, particulary, has done. Perhaps the web will eventually become a newspaper's main medium, with the printed version surviving as a niche luxury, rather like a leather-bound book."
But the question remains: how much would readers be prepared to pay for it?
posted by Liisa Rohumaa at 11:11 AM
1 Comments:
Frightening thought, though the idea of a leather-bound volume is quite appealing.
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