Wall Street Journal:
The Wall Street Journal is a launch partner for Apple Inc.’s $9.99-a-month news service, marking a significant shift in strategy meant to draw in new readers and paying subscribers without undercutting the publication’s core business.
And:
The paper finished 2018 with 1.71 million digital subscribers, with a full-priced subscription costing $39 a month. Its print subscribers totaled about 840,000. The Apple partnership is viewed as an opportunity to bring in revenue from a broader audience.
That $39 a month is worth keeping in mind when you assess the value of an Apple News+ subscription.
The partnership carries risks for the Journal, since each Apple user will generate much less subscription revenue for the company than a full-priced subscriber.
To me, this says that, for publishers, Apple News+ has far more value as a circulation builder than as a money maker. Not an unreasonable model to buy into.
Apple users will have access to only three days’ worth of the Journal’s archive, the people said. The Journal also negotiated terms that would allow it to drop out of the service, they said.
And there’s the specifics. I verified this myself by finding week+ old stories and trying to find them on Apple News+. I found all the newer stories, sometimes via the search field, but none of the older stories.
Side note on that search field: I’ve yet to find a way to search within a publication or within a story. I hope Apple expands on the search capabilities, as this would allow me to better refine searches, and better do a search without losing the current context (switching back to the News+ home page to do searches loses my place in the current story).
As to value, if you are interested in The Wall Street Journal, but not enough to pay $39 a month, Apple News+ is a terrific bargain. Add in the plethora of magazines (Federico did a nice job listing them all, as I posted previously), the LA Times and a host of digital publications, and Apple News+ really is a no brainer, assuming this sort of content appeals to you.
A bit ironically, for many of you, the headline linked article will be behind a paywall. But if you make your way to Apple News (note I said News and not News+) and search for “Wall Street Journal’s Partnership With Apple”, you’ll find the full article.
One final point: Now that the Wall Street Journal model has been worked out, I wonder if we’ll see the New York Times and Washington Post consider adopting something similar. As is, I’ve got subscriptions to both, but for folks that don’t, it’d be a great introduction.