Wrap: News Corp, Journalism Online, Kindle

News Corp look for consortium partners on paid content

News Corp. executives have been meeting in recent weeks with publishers about forming a consortium that would charge for news distributed online and on portable devices — and potentially stem the rising tide of red ink.

Chief Digital Officer Jonathan Miller has positioned News Corp. as a logical leader in the effort to start collecting fees from online readers because of its success with the Wall Street Journal Online, which boasts more than 1 million paying subscribers. He is believed to have met with major news publishers including New York Times Co., Washington Post Co., Hearst Corp. and Tribune Co., publisher of the Los Angeles Times.

Journalism Online starts showing signs of life

From Nieman Lab:

Journalism Online, the high-profile, if vaguely named, startup with a plan to charge for news on the Internet, says it has signed with media companies representing 176 daily newspapers. But it won’t say which ones.

On Thursday, PaidContent’s Staci Kramer reported she has “good reason to believe” that one of the companies is her corporate parent, Guardian News and Media, which publishes The Guardian and The Observer in London. To that list, I can now add Journal Communications, publisher of The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which claims just under a million monthly visitors to its website.

Fairfax says ‘not likely’ to Kindle
h/t to Bill Bennett

From smh:

Fairfax’s director of marketing and newspaper sales, Robert Whitehead, said: “We’re continuously examining all options for extending the reach of our mastheads and we’ll be very interested to see what Apple comes up with.

“I’m not sure how Amazon will go with Kindle in Australia but we are unlikely to proceed with it. Their business model represents a very unattractive partnership deal for newspaper publishers.”

It is unclear if Amazon will proceed with a launch in Australia.

News Corp’s chairman and chief executive, Rupert Murdoch, recently indicated he would be unlikely to proceed with the Amazon device. The Wall Street Journal is already on the device, which allows US subscribers to plug in and download content such as books and newspapers.

Mr Murdoch has questioned the benefit to newspapers of using Kindle because Amazon keeps the lion’s share of subscriber revenue, thought to be 70 per cent, as well as details of subscribers which News argues should reside with it.