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| Today's Herald in tablet form, and a table of contents. |
FAIRFAX MEDIA will release new iPad applications for the Herald and The Age today, promising a ''bespoke'' way of presenting its journalism, which it hopes will be a ''catalyst for change'' in the economics of news.
The applications are reminiscent of news magazines, with big pictures combined with many stories from the newspapers, including features, and their websites.
Readers worldwide can download magazines such as Good Weekend up to a week after publication. The applications will be sponsored and free for readers until December.
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| New horizons .. Stephen Hutcheon, the Sydney Morning Herald's Tablet Editor. |
After that they will cost $8.99 a month - the same as Fairfax's rival News Ltd charges for The Australian application.
Both are sold through Apple's online store, which will take its standard 30 per cent cut.
After the introductory period, Fairfax said, print subscribers would pay less for iPad apps, while the digital replicas of the newspapers would continue. Fairfax's chief executive of metropolitan publishing, Jack Matthews, said rival apps looked ''like dogs'' in comparison, and he expected some readers to read only the apps instead of the newspapers and their websites.
That ''substitution'' had implications for how Fairfax raised revenue.
''You can't charge for something on an iPad and give it away free on a desktop. And you can't charge for something in a newspaper and give it away free on a tablet,'' he said.
''The idea that you're going to get the same thing free in one area and pay for it in another area is probably yesterday's strategy.''
Fairfax says it took its time to research the application, learn from others, and ask readers what they wanted before starting its own, which was built in-house.
The Herald app is edited by Stephen Hutcheon. It will take five to 20 seconds to download the front page and a minute or two to download an entire issue. Mr Matthews said the advertising would be more in line with that of magazines than websites, given that it was a paid publication.
It had secured five initial sponsors, including Telstra, but he declined to say how much Fairfax had spent on development costs.
''We're coming out net ahead,'' he said. He doubted that Fairfax would soon give print subscribers tablets - in much the way mobile phones are included in telco contracts - instead of continuing to print newspapers, because the expense of tablets made it uneconomic. ''The numbers really don't stack up.''
Both are sold through Apple's online store, which will take its standard 30 per cent cut.
After the introductory period, Fairfax said, print subscribers would pay less for iPad apps, while the digital replicas of the newspapers would continue. Fairfax's chief executive of metropolitan publishing, Jack Matthews, said rival apps looked ''like dogs'' in comparison, and he expected some readers to read only the apps instead of the newspapers and their websites.
That ''substitution'' had implications for how Fairfax raised revenue.
''You can't charge for something on an iPad and give it away free on a desktop. And you can't charge for something in a newspaper and give it away free on a tablet,'' he said.
''The idea that you're going to get the same thing free in one area and pay for it in another area is probably yesterday's strategy.''
Fairfax says it took its time to research the application, learn from others, and ask readers what they wanted before starting its own, which was built in-house.
The Herald app is edited by Stephen Hutcheon. It will take five to 20 seconds to download the front page and a minute or two to download an entire issue. Mr Matthews said the advertising would be more in line with that of magazines than websites, given that it was a paid publication.
It had secured five initial sponsors, including Telstra, but he declined to say how much Fairfax had spent on development costs.
''We're coming out net ahead,'' he said. He doubted that Fairfax would soon give print subscribers tablets - in much the way mobile phones are included in telco contracts - instead of continuing to print newspapers, because the expense of tablets made it uneconomic. ''The numbers really don't stack up.''
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