NewMediaZero: Guardian hopes digital editions will prove lucrative

Some British news dailies, until recently, have been avoiding appearing online in a tiff with the media measurement company Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC), who so far has refused to include online circulation in with the offline equivalent figures. But The Guardian will launch a few of its publications online with subscription fees, recognizing the big revenue potential.

The Times still refuses to budge, hoping to eventually fold the online circ in with the offline figures and be able to increase ad prices, rather than creating new, online revenue streams. The Financial Times faces an interesting quandary in that its online subscribers are growing rapidly, while its print figures are slowly deflating, a trend that - through the jaundiced eyes of the ABC - looks like an unalloyed death spiral.