America’s Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) has just modified its definition of a digital magazine in the U.S. and Canada to accommodate new reading devices such as the Apple iPad.

The new standards state that a replica digital edition must include a print edition’s full editorial content and advertising, but it no longer needs to be presented in a layout identical to the print version. Replica digital editions will continue to be included in a magazine’s circulation guarantee, or rate base.

Predictably, Wired magazine was the first publication to seek review of its iPad version, which will qualify as a digital replica edition under the bureau’s new guidelines. GQ has offered an ABC approved replica app for the iPhone and iPod Touch since December 2009.

Last week the ABC board gave its initial approval to the creation of new U.S. reports that better reflect a publication’s total audience across a range of products. As a result, publishers may begin reporting such items as:

• E-reader distribution averages
• Mobile app purchases
• Total paid and verified circulation emanating from multiple products, including branded print editions associated with the flagship publications.
• A new “Publishing Plan” executive summary box on the first page, noting frequency, delivery platforms, and distribution methods across a publisher’s various print and electronic editions.
• Continued use of Audience-FAX, the 2007 initiative that allows U.S. publications to report print and online readership figures, as well as Web site and audience data from comScore, Nielsen Online, Omniture, or other sources audited by ABC Interactive.

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Should we, asks WAN:

Applaud our gains in web site traffic? Develop closer partnerships with Google and their competitors? Launch our own search engines and collective news portals? Lobby to change or enforce copyright laws online? Sue – or encourage anti-trust cases? What DO we do about Google?

The Great Debate at the 62nd World Newspaper Congress will examine these and other such questions as news publishers world-wide examine and discuss their options and strategies for getting a bigger slice of the internet advertising revenues which are today being massively reaped by Google.

FOR GOOGLE:

David Drummond, Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Council of Google, will be on stage to give the search giant’s perspectives.

Mr Drummond leads Google’s global teams for legal, government relations, corporate development and new business development, including strategic partnerships. Before joining Google in 2002, he served as its first outside counsel and worked with Larry Page and Sergey Brin to incorporate the company and secure its initial round of financing.

FOR THE NEWSPAPERS:

Gavin O’Reilly, CEO of Independent News & Media and President of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), will debate on behalf of the newspaper iindustry.

Gavin O’Reilly was probably the first major news industry personality to publicly criticise Google, when he called them `kleptomaniacs’ in a 2006 speech where he said they were “increasingly aiming their strategic efforts at traditional content originators and aggregators like newspaper publishers. The irony is that these search engines exist, largely, because of the traditional news and content aggregators and profit at their expense’’.

ON THE SIDELINE, HECKLING:

Since then, others have joined in the chorus of opposition, most notably Rupert Murdoch, who said last month: “The aggregators and plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content. If we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid content, it will be the content creators Š who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs who triumph.’’ Mr Murdoch just this week threatened to block Google News from taking any content from News Corp web sites.

AND THEN THERE’S US:

Marketers everywhere would love to see a Win-Win resolution. None of us will benefit if newspapers fall over. But we’ll also be the poorer if the internet devolves into a collection of islands hidden behind paywalls.

There are no easy answers. But we look forward to the Debate and its outcome.

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