March 29I don’t think most of what you say is even relevant. They are both digital editions he mentioned (not physical), so why on earth are sections, stories, and content missing from Apple’s version?
Because News America cannot afford to loose subscribers or newsstand buyers. The WSJ is currently running a 50-60% off sale. For digital subscriptions, $19.50 per month for 6 months and 15.60 per month for a year. For six days days of home delivery of the NYC metro edition in the NYC area is $21.60 per month for 6 or 12 months. And these are introductory rates, prices go up. Current annual rates are $395.25 for 6 months and $387.75 for a year; keep in mind that print prices tend to go up every year as paper, ink and postage don’t get cheaper.
Print advertising revenues continue to hemorrhage drastically, and Google, Facebook and Amazon gobbled up 73.1% of total US digital ad spending last year.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/20/amazon-advertising-business-stealing-market-share-from-google.html
Amazon’s market share has been growing rapidly and is expected to continue to do so, but not at the expense of Facebook and Google.
If this is Apple “curation” then their News+ content (and indeed the whole News app) is doomed to fall into irrelevance. There’s no way in hell I’d subscribe to any service that gives me an edited-by-distributor “version” of publications.
If you have been reading or subscribing to print publications or buying them at newsstands, the chances are very strong that you were reading many “curated” regional editions. The Wall Street Journal currently has twenty regional print editions in the US, and many international runs across the globe. They used to have 5-10 daily multi page designated local sections in top markets, but these were eliminated a few years ago. And they also have run cover splits, which were once quite common in magazines but very rare in dailies. Here’s a recent example:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/wsj-different-trump-headlines/
When I worked for TV Guide in the 1990s they had 127 regional editions. I just checked some current rate cards, and USA Today has 24 regional editions (which is significantly down from the last two decades), Wired has 1 national, 5 local and I didn’t check their international editions.
Even Gutenberg “curated” editions - he printed on two different types of paper. It was against the law at the time to produce a bible in any other language than Latin.