Delivering the News 365 Days a Year

News International broke with newspaper tradition by “publishing” a copy of The Sun on Christmas Day for the first time.

Since 1912 editors have agreed not to produce a Christmas Day edition, to give newsagents and paperboys and girls in the UK at least one day off a year.

But it is now a digital age, and in the words of The Sun’s editor they “couldn’t resist the opportunity to break with tradition” to produce a digital edition “direct to the readers’ sofas on Christmas Day.”

The Sun launched a daily app for the iPad back in the summer and in a clever marketing move launched a free trial over Christmas, no doubt in anticipation of all those people who received an iPad as a gift.

It has taken almost 100 years (and 41 since The Sun was launched) to make the move to publish on Christmas Day.

In these digital times newspapers have no choice but to look to monetise at least some of their digital content if they are to survive. There has been speculation that The Telegraph will be the first in 2011 to go behind a pay-wall.

Now News International has broken with tradition, my guess is that the rest will follow suit on Christmas Day 2011.