The Washington Post has launched an app for the iPad, which is free until mid-February 2011, according to a press release. The app requires registration.

"The Washington Post App for iPad is more than just an extension of our paper or website. It's an innovative, portable experience with our content that enables users to interact in a multi-dimensional way. Users can take full advantage of the experience that the iPad offers through our rich destination pages that provide everything a reader would want around a topic in one comprehensive place," said Raju Narisetti, managing editor, The Washington Post.

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Ross Dawson, chairman of media industry analysts Future Exploration Network, predicts that newspapers in the United Kingdom will be "extinct" by 2019, as the job newspapers do will be transitioned to other channels, The Drum reported today. According to Dawson, print editions of papers will cease to exist by the end of the decade in some countries but will survive past 2040 in others.

Of course, Dawson isn't the first to predict the demise of print. And, as MediaGuardian's Roy Greenslade pointed out: "Anyone who has dared to put a date to the disappearance of newsprint has, naturally enough, suffered from much scorn."

Image via RossDawson.com

Dawson's Newspaper Extinction Timeline suggests that in the United States, print will die out by 2017. In the UK and Iceland, print may live up to 2019. Newspapers in their "current form" might become "irrelevant" in Canada and Norway in 2020. A significant part of Europe may see the demise of newsprint by 2030, he states.

As The Independent launched i yesterday, free daily Metro has upped its efforts, as some may view the new paper "as a sort of upmarket Metro," MediaGuardian's Roy Greenslade noted today.

On Friday, Metro published its largest issue ever, at 96 pages in London and 80 pages in outlying regions. Metro, published by Associated Newspapers Ltd., reaches about 1.4 million people on an average weekday, while i, at 56 pages, is a sort of condensed version of the Independent, targets younger readers, and costs 20p. According to Press Gazette, executives at the Independent are hoping for a circulation of about 200,000 for i.

One of Metro's business advantages is that it has a tight hold on national advertising. And, executives at Metro say they "do not believe that people will choose to pay 20p for their rapid morning read when they can get Metro for free," Greenslade wrote. "The Independent's bosses, however, argue that there is a difference between regular Metro readers and the audience they expect to read i. That may be so, but it is clear that the description of i's potential market - time-poor, cash-rich, youngish and urban - is very similar indeed to Metro's current readers."

Politico will launch early next year Politico Pro, a subscription news service focused on energy, technology and health care coverage, The New York Times reported yesterday. The service will cost between US$1,495 and $2,500 a year for the first topic, and $1,000 for every additional topic.

"There is a perception that this market is overserved, when we actually think it's underserved," executive editor of Politico Jim VandeHei said. "The idea is that we want to find multiple revenue streams so we can grow even bigger."

Since 2006, Politico has offered free content on its website and has distributed free copies of its print edition in Washington, The New York Observer pointed out. Its main source of revenue is advocacy advertising in its newspaper.

More recently, other media companies have expanded their Washington coverage. Two weeks ago, Bloomberg announced the launch of a news subscription service that will focus on the U.S. federal government. Yesterday, the National Journal relaunched its website offering more daily content and special features, The New York Observer reported.