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the New York Times said earlier this week that he had refused to join the next Apple News subscription service. the Washington Post would have made the same decision.
CEO Mark Thompson went further by warning other newspapers of the double danger of accepting Apple's deal …
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Thompson said Reuters The first problem is the loss of subscriber revenues.
A monthly digital subscription to the New York Times costs $ 15 and Thompson said he did not intend to forego this subscription to participate in other platforms such as Apple.
Last year, the Times generated digital revenues of more than $ 700 million, which is close to the goal of $ 800 million in annual digital sales by 2020. Digital ads surpassed print revenue for the first time in the fourth quarter of 2018. The Times is investing in its newsroom, which now has 1,550 journalists and is the largest in its history.
Apple would retain 50% of subscription revenues and distribute the balance among all publishers in proportion to the sources read by customers. This agreement is unlikely to make sense for many of the 10 largest US newspapers.
But a threat probably greater is what will happen in the medium term.
Mark Thompson, managing director of the largest US newspaper by its subscribers, warned that the use of third-party distribution can be dangerous for publishers who risk losing control of their own products.
"We tend to be reluctant enough to almost get people to find our journalism elsewhere," he told Reuters in an interview on Thursday. "In general, we are also worried about the confusion of our journalism in a sort of Magimix (mixer) with the journalism of all the others."
Thompson argued that accepting Apple's terms would be tantamount to ceding all power to Cupertino and that this decision would likely come back to bite the publications joining them. He said the experience of Netflix would draw lessons from the video streaming service, only to find that it has turned into a unilateral agreement later in the line.
"Even though Netflix has offered you a lot of money. … Does it really make sense to help Netflix create a gigantic base of subscribers to the point where they could spend $ 9 billion a year creating their own content and paying me less for my library? He asked.
The same risk applies here, he suggested, when Apple News becomes the primary brand, opening the way for Apple to write its own news content at a later date.
Apple is to announce Apple News alongside its streaming video service at a service-oriented event to be held on March 25. Apple would have managed to sign the The Wall Street Journal, but we do not know if other major publications are on board, although Vox apparently did.
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