(by Dennis Tyhacz)

While the newspaper industry needs some good news on the revenue front, newspaper publishers shouldn’t get too uppity on Apple’s upcoming Tablet just yet.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported how Steve Jobs sees New Money in Old Media, and that he’s been in discussions with newspaper & magazine publishers about how “they can work together”. Sure, of course Apple wants us all to work together, it’s only made them a very wealthy company by having these discussions. Look no further then the IPOD.

By looking at the music industry, newspaper publishers can learn what to expect and what not to expect from Apple innovation. It’s worth noting a large number of the record company executives (that Jobs had awfully similar discussions with) about “distribution and revenue” with the IPOD, the very executives who he managed to convince to sign away vital distribution fees to, and “to trust Apple’s good intentions”, have since put themselves at Apple’s mercy, largely based on giving up their middle-man positioning in the music industry. Now, is that a bad thing? It depends who you ask….

The music labels, up until the development of the IPOD were the backbone of the music industry, and eager to hear about new technology as CD sales were starting to slump (sound familiar?). Money was no object for these behemoths, and soon they witnessed their business-structure crumble as they lost distribution-market-share. Back in 2007, Reuters was already reporting how the music industry did an about-face after discovering 70% of the digital-music distribution market share was in Apples’ court, and soon were forced to scramble for “alternatives to iTunes to boost their negotiating power against Apple when licensing contracts are renewed”.

I don’t know about you, but I still buy my music from ITUNES, not from the labels’ websites or from any web startups. For the Artists? They benefited because it pumped their music in more consumers heads across the country based on “distribution convenience”. Apple had single-handedly wiped out a label-to-distribution dinosaur business system just by making music more available to the consumer. While the IPOD was supposed to help give a boost to the music industry, (as Apple originally touted it to the industry heads), it effectively gave a boost to the music itself, and lined Apple’s pockets in the process, not so much “the industry” itself. While beautiful on the one hand, it’s scary on the other depending on which side of the revenue fence you sit.

With all this said, it’s worth noting that there’s several factors that may or may not effect the Newspaper industry with the debut of the Tablet:

Price
While the IPOD was readily available for a couple hundred dollars, the upcoming Tablet is reported to be in the $1,000 range. While continuing to do “designer-style-PR” in an effort to convince the American public that Steve Jobs was sitting in a basement thinking up the Tablet all by himself, Apple is still gambling that everyone is going to want to shell out $1,000 for one of these hot gadgets.

Same Old Hype?
I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of reading quotes like this: “Apple doesn’t comment on rumors and speculation [...] Mr. Jobs didn’t respond to a request for comment.” Of course Mr. Jobs didn’t comment. The company still uses consumer speculation as a marketing ploy, and trusts the American public (notably Apple fans) will continue to seek out any Apple product knowing Steve Jobs was behind it, even 4 years after the CEO was investigated for shady stock option practices.

Convenience – Remember the Internet?
The Wall Street Journal notes “In developing the device, Apple focused on the role the gadget could play in homes and in classrooms – the company envisions that the tablet can be shared by multiple family members to read news and check email in homes.” Sounds alot like a common desktop computer no? Apple needs to do a better job of making this sound like a revolutionary object everyone needs to own. As the internet has proven, consumer news-reading-convenience doesn’t automatically lead to profits for any news agency or newspaper for that matter. The internet is a prime example of similar challenges facing the newspaper industry, but some might argue that the industry heads themselves need to get a clue about how it works. After all this is the same industry that literally just two years ago, one of it’s weathiest occupants was whining about revenue lost to the internet and Google.. Here we are, three years later, the newspaper industry still needs to develop an understanding of the true benefits of the internet, let alone figuring out how to generate more revenue off of it.

Content
Ah! Here’s an important factor that the newspaper industry should be focusing on, but how will the newspaper medium even factor into the tablet? Sadly, its evident there’s just as much competition facing the newspaper industry on the internet, and the newspaper industry will face very similar challenges on the Tablet.

What does it all mean?
Once the hype subsides from the Apple Tablet, the newspaper industry needs to remind themselves they were already rewarded with a technologically advanced distribution model – (how are you currently reading this article?), and while it’s exciting to think every home in America will soon have another Apple gadget to play with, at the end of the day, it’s the CONTENT that readers want. News to pick up, news to read online, all over the world, and in record-speed. What’s wrong with that?

While the newspaper industry needs a major revenue face-lift, don’t bet on Apple to concentrate on anything but distribution-profit for themselves. The rest newspaper publishers, is up for you to decide.