Digital E-Reading Alliance Drafting Proposal for Newspaper Consortium

By: Jennifer Saba The Digital Publishing Alliance (DPA), a member-supported initiative of the Reynolds Journalism Institute, is drafting up a proposal to create an e-reader consortium for newspaper publishers and other content providers.

The DPA, which includes 32 members such as The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and the Newspaper Association of America, has been working on a proposition for the past month.

The working group consists of John Forcucci and Joel Swanson of The Boston Globe, Sean Reily of the Los Angeles Times and Roger Fidler, program director for digital publishing at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute. Assisting the group is Boston attorney Andrew Updegrove, who specializes in consortiums.

The DPA hopes to have the proposal ready to present to major U.S. newspapers and one international paper before the end of June.

"We have to recognize that [e-readers] are a fourth platform," said Fidler. "It's distinct from mobile and the Web and print."

As e-readers gain traction among consumers, the DPA wants to make sure that content providers are ahead of the curve. The alliance seeks to create some standards around content presentation and advertising.

"We are trying to counter the tendency for everybody to do their own thing," Fidler said. "Without standards and everybody working individually -- all that will do is create a lot of confusion and delay adoption."

Fidler is seeing a lot of activity among newspaper executives who are eager to embrace e-readers, while simultaneously trying to avoid the mistakes made with the Web.

"Advertising is a critical component," said Fidler, who noted that with e-readers, publishers see two revenue streams, one from subscriptions and one from advertising. "It's the old newspaper model, which is a very good model if you can make it work."

The idea to propose a consortium came out of a May 5-6 DPA e-reader symposium at the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri.

During the meeting, the DPA also launched a store for digital "newsbooks." Essentially the newsbooks are investigative and explanatory journalism features that have been repackaged and formatted for e-readers (and computers too). The site currently has nine newsbooks online for sale, including the Pulitzer Prize winning investigative report from St. Petersburg Times reporter Lane DeGregory about a "feral child" ($4.95). Twelve other newsbooks are in the cue.

There are two online stores for the newsbooks, one geared towards consumers and one geared towards the educational market.

"We don't anticipate a huge amount of revenue from this but it could be significant over time. What's more important is for people to become more aware of the quality of the journalism," Fidler said.

The DPA gives 40% of the revenue from newsbook purchases to the newspapers, 40% to the hosting service and the rest goes to the Reynolds Institute to maintain the program. Newspaper publishers can sell the newsbooks on other platforms. Fidler said that within the first day they sold 12 newsbooks, without any meaningful marketing.