Japanese Newspapers Joining Forces

Japan’s three largest papers have formed the Nikkei-Asahi-Yomiuri Internet Business Partnership which combines all of their content onto one single website. They also recently launched an iPhone Application which allows users to read headlines and short descriptions of stories before being linked to the website to read it in full. Check out this article for more info.

So far there’s no business model for this, but this reminds me of a classmate’s idea of newspapers banding together under legislation to not undercut one another if they decided to charge for news. What if they centralized where users GOT the news, like Japan is doing. Japan hopes the coalition will boost print sales, but future newsreaders of the world will not want to read newsprint.

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