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Dec. 24, 2009

The New York Post and the Wall Street Journal are now offering exclusive subscription deals through the latest eBook Reader from Sony.

Sony's new eReader Daily Edition, which sells for $399 will be the only e-reader that carries the Post. Readers will have to pay $9.99 a month to subscribe.

And the Wall Street Journal, which is available for $14.99 a month as it is on Amazon.com Inc.'s old Kindle device, will have an optional after-market update for Sony subscribers for an additional $5.

Overall, both newspapers are owned by News Corp., whose chairman, Rupert Murdoch, has criticized the newspaper-reading experience on the Kindle and taken aim at Amazon for offering publishers only a third of the subscription revenue.

However, News Corp. and Sony officials won't say how they plan to share revenue, at least for now.

In a separate venture, News Corp. has joined Time Inc., Conde Nast, Hearst Corp. and Meredith - whose titles include Time, Cosmopolitan and Sports Illustrated among others - aimed at developing better digital editions of the newspapers.

The new eBook Reader from Sony went on sale in November and is scheduled to start shipping tomorrow, on Christmas Day.

It has a touch screen that allows readers to highlight, take notes and look up words on the device's built-in dictionary. It is Sony's first e-reader that is capable of wirelessly downloading content, adopting a key feature of the Kindle.

The push into e-readers by newspapers and magazines is part of a bid for more sustainable revenue streams as publishers face staggering declines in print advertising, the traditional money stream for news operations.

The new subscription deals on the Sony reader will be available in the next few weeks in the online Sony Reader Store. Content will be automatically delivered daily.

The new eBook Reader will also carry an exclusive bundle of selected stories from MarketWatch.com, part of the Wall Street Journal Digital Network, for $10.99 per month.

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Source: Sony.