The Australian achieves 100,000 paying digital subscribers
The Australian has finally exceeded 100,000 paying digital subscribers, claiming to be the first Australian news media brand to reach the milestone.
The announcement:
At the annual News Awards gala event held before 250 guests on Friday night, The Australian announced it had exceeded 100,000 paid digital subscribers.
Accepting the award for 2017 News Brand of the Year, Paul Whittaker, editor-in-chief of The Australian, expressed his delight and confidence in the strength of news publishing in the Australian market, evident by this significant milestone.
The Australian led the way as the first news brand to launch a digital subscriptions model on October 24, 2011, and passed 100,000 subscribers exactly six years later to the day.
Mr Whittaker said: “The subscription milestone was one of the most significant in the masthead’s 53-year history and represented ”a digital coming of age”.
“This is very significant for The Australian as we steadily and purposefully make the transition from a primarily print product to a fully integrated print and digital news operation.
”Passing the 100,000 subscriber mark represents a digital coming of age that occurred on the very day of the sixth anniversary of our becoming the first news brand in the country to launch a digital paywall, on October 24, 2011 – a time when many of our competitors dismissed paid content as a folly, saying the public would never pay for online news. Those same sceptical media outlets are now charging for their content.
”The Australian has consistently invested in delivering value to subscribers by innovating across digital platforms.”
CEO of The Australian, Nicholas Gray said: “There are a few critical success factors, most notably a relentless commitment to delivering value for our subscribers.
“Our newsroom has focussed on investigating and reporting exclusive news and writing influential informed opinion and analysis every day. At the same time we increased our investment in the digital product, user experience and capability. We have always tried to retain a consistent intellectual bridge across all our products,” Mr Gray said.
“We are proud to be the first Australian news media masthead to celebrate this achievement.”
In the last year The Australian has: relaunched its iPad and iPhone apps; launched a ”Voice” news service via Google Home; launched ”The Front Page” newsletter – delivering tomorrow’s front page exclusively to subscribers before it’s printed, been the first commercial organisation in Australia to launch an AI bot via Facebook Messenger; developed new storytelling tools for its investigative journalism on The Queen & Zac Grieve series with Screen Australia and expanded its reach to include the Mandarin-speaking population with the launch of a Chinese language website – cn.theaustralian.com.au.
Source: News Corp
