Belgian newspaper and magazine publishers are the latest to hope a joint digital news kiosk can prove profitable.
Such an initiative, GoPress, is now rolling out softly to offer chargeable access to replica editions.
GoPress is owned jointly bynine Belgian publishers: Concentra Uitgeversmaatschappij, Corelio Publishing, De Vlijt, Editions de l’Avenir, IPM, Mediafin, Persgroep Publishing, Rossel and Roularta Media Group.
It is powered jointly by digital newspaper scanning agencies Mediargus, which is owned by Belgian newspapers, and PressBanking to make the editions available as HTML5 across multiple devices.
But editions, 32 of which are so far available, are priced individually rather than with a single pricepoint for the whole kaboodle.
All of which makes GoPress not unlike PressReader, the digital replica clearing house that stocks more than 2,100 newspaper editions and which nevertheless includes both individual and all-in monthly subscription
Users can authenticate using Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Payment is powered by Dutch online content payment facilitator Cleeng, which already powers payment on France’s LaTribune, which now charges for some of its web articles.
GoPress is scheduled to be in full-swing by summer. But it’s by no means certain that delivering newspapers to digital screens in their traditional format will set Belgian readers’ worlds alight.
Belgian news publishers have been amongst the world’s most vociferous when it comes to protecting their position against what they see as pilfering search engines.