Apple is reportedly interested in bringing newspaper subscriptions to iTunes and an announcement is expected soon, the San Jose Mercury News recently published.
Not surprisingly, Cupertino-based Apple has remained silent regarding the report, but Roger Fidler, Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute head of digital publishing, noted Apple may snag a 30% subscription cut off the top -- and as much as 40% from app advertising revenue will go to Apple.
To help woo publishers, Apple will also use an opt-in ability so subscribers can give publishers the ability to see reading habits of subscribers on iTunes. This will hopefully give advertisers a better sense of what readers want, but will also cause alarm among privacy experts.
The publishers "want the data of their customers so they can integrate it into their circulation database so they know who their customers are," Fidler told the MercuryNews.
Newspaper companies have struggled to keep up with the Internet, with Google News, Microsoft Bing, and several other search engines/major news aggregators that continue to cut into their revenue. Some news conglomerates already offer apps through iTunes, but most individual newspapers are trying to figure the problem out for themselves.
USA Today, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and other major newspapers have either launched their own apps and paid online access, or plan to do so sometime in the near future.
During a journalism class in 2003, I learned how difficult traditional news companies struggled -- just receiving weekly news digests and a small number of PDA users were seen as the troubling storm on the horizon, although things have obviously gotten worse. Now, smartphones, netbooks and tablets, and other popular gadgets are in use today that have squeezed traditional newspapers even further.
The looming announcement of an iTunes newspaper subscription service isn't too shocking, but it will be interesting to see if publishers and Apple will be able to get along. Apple's dominance of the MP3 market has led record labels to seek out Google and other new partners trying to rival iTunes.
