Games go social, computers go mobile, and communication goes online, but many newspapers and magazines still haven’t made the connection; Or as the old saying goes: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” It hasn’t ever been more relevant than today when New Corp failed to convince many of its publishers that an online subscription-based newsstand was worth their while.

Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp, is always on the hunt to find new ways to make people pay, even if that means pissing people off. The concept of an online subscription newsstand sounds like a fair middle ground; it is a great opportunity to tear down the pay walls and build up subscriptions in a new age of digital content. This plan was code named “Project Alesia.”

But it didn’t quite work out. Rupert Murdoch has stated that he failed to gain enough support to reach “critical mass” with the ranks of the publishers. As a result, the plan has been scratched. It doesn’t get much better when considering that plans to put subscription-based content on Apple’s iPad and other devices through the iTunes marketplace has been met with many obstacles as well.

In the end, it was a $31.5 million disaster, which, fittingly so, is not so different than the story of the print industry. Oh well.

As reported by Reuters