Digital Gazette takes off

(PHUKET): In a development which might surprise a number of “old media” publishers (and not surprise more modern ones at all), the Phuket Gazette‘s new “Digital Gazette” has sold 21 subscriptions into its tiny niche readership market within the first 24 hours of its launch as a paid product.

Incorporating virtually the entire content of it’s now 64-page weekly hard-copy newspaper – including all stories, features, photos, letters, classifieds and display ads – the new Digital Gazette is expected to attract widespread interest from overseas readers who now pay 9,000 baht a year for their subscriptions. The Digital product is priced at 1,040 baht a year, a 20% discount off the local newsstand price.

Rudi Andermatt, a subscriber from Switzerland, told the Gazette this morning that he used to wait 6 to 8 days for the newspaper to reach his mailbox in Zurich. “Now, I download it in about 1 minute and save about 8,000 baht a year for the privilege,” he says.

The new electronic newspaper is read through a proprietary “Digital Gazette Browser” developed by the newspaper’s IT team. Now available as a free download, the software enables readers to access archived issues of the Phuket Gazette and to download them onto their hard drives, as one might do in preparation for a flight, for example.

“Another advantage of the digital product is that it doesn’t pile up in your mailbox or on your doorstep while you’re away,” says Paul Kreuch of Chicago, Illinois. “You simply download it from wherever in the world you happen to be.” 

For more details of the Digital Gazette, readers are invited to click here.