Where to get multiple newspapers

In February I published a long paper structured around these areas. Its main goal was to explain the strategies news outlets are applying to deal with the profound changes required by a subscription business in the hope that some could be used by other news organizations elsewhere. Here I publish an excerpt from the most important chapter—the one that examines how the best newspapers are reimagining their value propositions for the digital age.

Here are some of the themes that came out during my interviews on the best ways to do that. The Guardian launched its membership model on September 10, It was an important moment for The Guardian. A few weeks later, it would overtake The New York Times as the second most popular English-language newspaper website behind the Daily Mail. It had published scoops such as the Edward Snowden revelations and the phone-hacking scandal.

It had just won its first Pulitzer Prize. Circulation had been cut in half in a few year s. Part of those losses had to do with an expensive American expansion.

The Guardian was the eighth player in a small market like Britain. The United States was a much bigger market and held plenty of opportunity. American readers were richer and much easier to monetize.

The American operation brought millions of readers but not enough revenue. With other British newspapers setting up paywalls, many people wondered whether The Guardian would follow suit. During a session with Clay Shirky, editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger said the audience would have to pay to sustain the newspaper, then asked them a question. Would they prefer giving money to the newspaper as a cause or paying a monthly fee to get tickets and discounts? They saw The Guardian as a cause.

It gathered around 12, members in the first year. At the end of the fiscal year , The Guardian reported over , regular supporters. Around , were members and recurring contributors. The newspaper also received over , one-off contributions. This remarkable turnaround happened after the newspaper shut down its event business and put its editorial mission at the center of the membership program. After all, they realized the plastic bucket was more powerful than any loyalty scheme. We had published an incredible range of stories throughout the years.

Two-thirds of the revenue of Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter still comes from print. After adopting digital subscriptions, Dagens Nyheter started creating innovative formats such as VR and audiobooks. Some of the things Dagens Nyheter has done will sound familiar to other publications. As part of their efforts, journalists at Dagens Nyheter tried to identify the kind of stories very few people read. After doing that, they managed to increase traffic.

Le Monde and The Guardian have also reduced their output with similar results. Keeping your focus is really important when running a reader revenue model.

Spanish journalist Ignacio Escolar faced a similar challenge after founding eldiario. As its audience grew, Escolar considered publishing sports news after being approached by a group of sports journalists.

News sites across the world are realizing that content is just one of the aspects of their value proposition. According to accountants PWC, this trend is only going to continue. Could a Spotify-style solution work for the news industry as it has done for music and for video entertainment through outlets like Netflix? There are plenty of companies trying to make it happen more on them below and from a consumer point of view, it seems to make sense. As most quality news sources in the commercial sector disappear behind paywalls, they are competing for an ever-smaller slice of the small minority willing to pay for news online.

This suggests there may be an untapped market for bundled news subscriptions in the UK. But at the Spotify price point, it would not be enough to pay the bills on its own. Around the same time that Spotify was revolutionising the music industry, UK newspaper publishers were building something similar for the news industry called Project Alesia.

The man in charge of that scheme, Dominic Young, is today sceptical about the chances of Spotify-for-news ever getting off the ground. Although it is worth noting that as the founder of Axate, a micropayments system for publishers, he has a dog in this fight. The bigger the bundle the less valuable it is for individual publishers. The payment models adopted by the various bundled news subscriptions vary but no one has yet come up with something sufficiently compelling for publishers to persuade most to sign up.

Pressreader is perhaps the company which has come closest to creating a Spotify-style service for news. Having launched in , it now delivers m articles per month to readers. Chief executive Nikolay Malyarov says that whereas artists and film-makers are content for platforms to be the main publishers of their content, most newspaper and magazine companies are not there yet. Like all the big bundled subscription companies, Pressreader deploys a great deal of technology and elbow grease to ensure that magazine and newspaper pages render effectively on smaller screens, including offering text-only viewing.

Its model is mainly based around being a virtual newsstand that allows you to browse thousands of print editions. And somewhat amazingly, it can provide print-style editions of titles that have never been near a press. And best of all, we share that anonymized reading data with our partners. So not only are you offering a better experience, but you get to know your customers better too.

PressReader connects seamlessly with all of your customer-facing platforms, including apps and websites, and integrates easily with other marketing channels like email and messaging.

PressReader lets you offer the same, consistent experience during every touchpoint at every location. No matter how big your business grows, PressReader is ready to grow with you. Our solutions scale easily, giving every customer access to great content in minutes.

Stop worrying about delivery logistics or over-the-top operational costs. Adding an awesome product to your current technology stack should feel good. So, when you say yes to PressReader, we flip the switch immediately. We manage all of the setup and offer complimentary staff training to make sure you and your team have the resources you need to make the most of our partnership. If you choose a more robust solution, like an app integration, reservation email integration, or offline access, your marketing and tech teams will need to meet with ours for a bit -- but we'll make things easy for them.

PressReader for Businesses. Change the way you offer newspapers and magazines. Watch a demo. A few businesses that use PressReader every day.