WIRELESS MAY MAKE MONEY FOR NEWSPAPERS

By: Mark Fitzgerald Revenue Models Emerge For Evolving Medium


NEW ORLEANS -- Transmission times are slow, the screen images are poor, programming standards aren't settled yet, and the technology doesn't work on older machines: Right now, wireless looks an awful lot like the Internet in its infancy.

But there's a big difference that explains why papers were giving wireless a serious look at last week's Nexpo show. Delivering content to cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and other wireless devices appears to be something that can actually make money for newspapers.

"I believe the phone company or other [cellular] carriers will pay us one way or another for our content. Look at all the ads for cellular in your paper -- they need content to compete," said Donn Friedman, assistant managing editor for the Albuquerque (N.M.) Journal's abqjournal.com.

Subscriptions are another revenue model newspapers are looking at, because unlike the great majority of Web surfers, wireless users have not been trained to expect free content. At The Salt Lake Tribune -- which typically gets about 300 to 500 people accessing the abbreviated news on its daily cell-phone edition -- users have volunteered to pay for access to the full text of the paper, said Tony Semerad, director of the newspaper's NewsViews Solutions unit. Their usual offer: $5 a month.

Even banner ads appear to work, getting click-through rates of 5% to 12%, according to Heather Kiehl, a manager for WindWire, the wireless ad company.

Basic technology problems of transmission speed and program language remain, but already a kind of Java-for-wireless called Brew has emerged.

"I think every newspaper should look at wireless -- but they shouldn't be stampeded into it," NewsViews' Semerad said. "I'd encourage people to chill out a bit."



Mark Fitzgerald (mfitzgerald@editorandpublisher.com) is editor at large for E&P.



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