Magazine Publishers to Announce Joint Digital Venture
A group of four magazine publishers and media conglomerate News Corp are expected to announce Tuesday a joint venture aimed at developing new standards for digital magazines, according to a report. The move is seen as preventing Apple or other e-reader developers dictating a new age of digital publishing.
The new company — as yet unnamed — will be jointly owned by Hearst, Time Inc., News Corp., Condé Nast Publications and Meredith Corp., according to The Wall Street Journal.
According to the report, the group’s aim is to create standards governing advertising and how readers can buy magazines through an online store. The publishers hope to prevent a repeat of how Apple’s iPod and iTunes store decimated the traditional music business.
The news follows a Nov. 24 report that said 50 publishers were “within weeks” of announcing a similar consortium. The group had met with e-reader makers, including Apple, on creating an iTunes-like magazine kiosk, according to The New York Observer.
Apple reportedly is preparing a tablet for introduction in 2010. As part of the roll-out, the Cupertino, Calif. company is talking with publishers about ways to develop content for the device.
- Via iClarified and Wall Street Journal
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
