Nytimes paywall starting March 28th

[Thailandnotes]

I don't get it. If the wall is as porous as the description below suggests, who is going to pay 15 - 35 $ per month?


http://daggle.com/york-times-paywall-fit-2503

"So the New York Times is finally getting a paywall. I’ve got no problem with paywalls. I’ve run my own membership based services for almost 15 years. My issue is with paywalls that make little sense.

How’s the NYT paywall going to impact me? Apparently, not at all. That’s because I read most New York Times stories by either:

* Finding them via Google News
* Finding them via social media, such as Twitter

All New York Times stories you find through Google News will remain free, though Google’s First Click Free program does let the NYT and any publisher limit you to five stories per day, per visit from Google.

If you really read that many NYT stories via Google each day, then you probably know that you can clear your cookies or use another browser to get around this. But really, are most people from Google going to the New York Times more than five times per day?

There’s no limit whatsoever for those who come via Twitter or Facebook. None. In fact, none of those visits will count against your free 20 visits that everyone gets."

[jk]

Re: Nytimes paywall starting March 28th

the paywall affects people who go to nytimes stories via the times' own website. i.e. if you rely on the times as a central source of news/info/columns/etc.

they are open for people who click through from google, etc, because they want to bring in traffic from users who may eventually become attached to the times itself.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Nytimes paywall starting March 28th

I go to nytimes.com most every day and click on three to six articles. I'd bet there are lots of people around globe who do the same. So, if it's 20 stories per month, I'll be asked to pay after day three or four, but I won't. There are too many other news sources out there now and too many ways to slip in the back door. When the Nytimes created "Times Select" and took Frank Rich and others behind a wall, I paid. It was cheap and the editorial content was worth it in my opinion. No more. It will be interesting to see what happens.

[we_are_toast]

Re: Nytimes paywall starting March 28th

I will most certainly pay their price. The NYT is not perfect, but they do an incredible job of doing in-depth reporting. We are losing too many high quality news outlets that practice journalism as it was intended to be practiced. And at the same time, the number of sloppy news outlets, and outlets who's sole purpose is to push a political or Oligarchical misinformation campaign are exploding. Even here on iTulip, more and more of those misinformation sources get quoted as legitimate.

I firmly believe that a democracy can not survive with a deliberately misinformed public. Most revolutions will quickly involve getting control of the information outlets. My democracy is important enough to me that I'll gladly support an organization that is trying to provide quality information to the public. I also have no illusions that the growing propaganda machine from talk radio to FOX news, to the explosion of misinformation websites, will continue to savagely attack every mistake that the legitimate news sites make. The war is on, and most polls show that the misinformation campaign is winning, but I will do what I can to turn back the tide.

[don]

Re: Nytimes paywall starting March 28th

I'm one of the old-school guys that prefers turning the pages of a newspaper rather than clicking through a site. I get home-delivered the handful of national papers. The Times is among them so I guess I'll retain online access. It will be interesting to see if this will be a step forward in solving the free subscription aspect of news online. Very few publications have the resources to do anything in depth. The subscription revenue stream is an important part of that capability. Not as vital as advertising but important as well. (Anyone who goes to the Asia Times site can attest to how a site can be made nearly unwatchable by invasive ads. The latest is audio you can't shut off. You have to kill your PC volume to shut them up.) For a century people have paid magazine and newspaper subscriptions. The internet came with a free cachet as a marketing tool for acceptance. What's next? Mom, are we there yet

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Nytimes paywall starting March 28th

I graduated from college in 1979. One of my teachers had recently been president of the American Library Association. The statement "In your life time information will become more expensive that you can ever imagine," was hard to swallow, but spot on. 250 for itulip, 400 for NYT....I know people who are not rich, but who are paying over 5,000 dollars per year for content and avenues to access it.

[don]

Re: Nytimes paywall starting March 28th

I graduated from college in 1979. One of my teachers had recently been president of the American Library Association. The statement "In your life time information will become more expensive that you can ever imagine," was hard to swallow, but spot on. 250 for itulip, 400 for NYT....I know people who are not rich, but who are paying over 5,000 dollars per year for content and avenues to access it.

When cable television first became available what it could offer most subscribers was a better picture . . . period. It was cheap. Decades later it's more expensive that you can ever imagine

[ViC78]

Re: Nytimes paywall starting March 28th

If Felix Salmon's math is correct, and it seems credible to me. this is not a good move by the NYT.

What does all this mean for the New York Times Company? I can’t see how it’s good. The paywall is certainly being set high enough that a lot of regular readers will not subscribe. These are readers who would normally link to the NYT from their blogs, who would tweet NYT articles, who would post those articles on Facebook, and so on. As a result, not only will traffic from these readers decline, but so will all their referral traffic, too. The NYT makes more than $300 million a year in digital ad revenue, so even a modest decline in pageviews, relative to what the site could have generated sans paywall, can mean many millions of dollars foregone. On top of that, the paywall itself cost somewhere over $40 million to develop.
Against all that, how much revenue will the paywall bring in? A very large number of the paper’s most loyal readers are already print subscribers, and get access to the website at no extra cost. So the new revenues from the paywall will only come from people who read the website a lot but who don’t subscribe in print.
How many of those people are there? Emily Bell reckons that the number of people who’ll even hit the paywall in the first place is only about 5% of the NYT’s 33 million or so unique visitors. That’s 1.6 million people — compare the 1.3 million people who already subscribe to the paper on Sundays. The former is not a perfect superset of the latter, of course, but there’s a big overlap; let’s say that realistically the NYT is going after a universe of no more than 800,000 people that it’s going to ask to subscribe. And let’s be generous and say that 15% of them do so, paying an average of $200 per year apiece. That’s extra revenues of $24 million per year.
$24 million is a minuscule amount for the New York Times company as a whole; it’s dwarfed not only by total revenues but even by those total digital advertising revenues of more than $300 million a year. This is what counts as a major strategic move within the NYT?
As Ken Doctor notes, the Times Select fiasco, which was unceremoniously killed in 2007 to no one’s regret, was bringing in a good $10 million per year. This new paywall is much more elaborate and expensive, and it’s being introduced into a website which is currently something of a cash cow as regards ad revenues.
So by my back-of-the-envelope math, the paywall won’t even cover its own development costs for a good two years, and beyond that will never generate enough money to really make a difference to NYTCo revenues. Maybe that might change if the NYT breaks its promise to offer full website access for free to all print subscribers. But that decision would be fraught in all manner of other ways.
For the time being, though, I just can’t see how this move makes any kind of financial sense for the NYT. The upside is limited; the downside is that it ceases to be the paper of record for the world. Who would take that bet?

[c1ue]

Re: Nytimes paywall starting March 28th

The issue isn't the cost per se.

The issue is the result obtained.

For me, the NYT was no longer worth reading even when it was free.

The 2 or 3 articles every 3 months which actually betrayed some trace of journalistic integrity simply were not worth the 5000 crap ones I had to wade through.

The reality is that there are more people getting their news via the Internet today, and the number and quality of reporting - both in terms of pandering to similar mindsets as well as in terms of breadth and (peak) quality - is such that any so called professional publication must earn its attention.

And the NYT hasn't for me - and apparently a lot of other people as well.

They won't disappear. So long as the existing 50 year olds and up are alive, they'll have at least some customers.

[don]

Re: Nytimes paywall starting March 28th

The issue isn't the cost per se.

The issue is the result obtained.

For me, the NYT was no longer worth reading even when it was free.

The 2 or 3 articles every 3 months which actually betrayed some trace of journalistic integrity simply were not worth the 5000 crap ones I had to wade through.

The reality is that there are more people getting their news via the Internet today, and the number and quality of reporting - both in terms of pandering to similar mindsets as well as in terms of breadth and (peak) quality - is such that any so called professional publication must earn its attention.

And the NYT hasn't for me - and apparently a lot of other people as well.

They won't disappear. So long as the existing 50 year olds and up are alive, they'll have at least some customers.

Could you share your sources of daily information with us.

[zoog]

Re: Nytimes paywall starting March 28th

...I read most New York Times stories by either:

* Finding them via Google News
* Finding them via social media, such as Twitter...

Every NYT story I read is posted here in the free news section of iTulip by don.

[c1ue]

Re: Nytimes paywall starting March 28th

I use a custom newsfeed which browses Yahoo and Google headlines, then picks out the top 50 or so most common themes which are repeated at least 5 times.

This is then supplemented by specific searches for areas I care about.

I back this up with scans of Yahoo! Finance, SFgate (Chronicle.com), iTulip, and a few specialized sites (tech crap).

In turn this is added to by people who send me stuff.

On top of this there are a series of web site I visit daily - you can probably guess as I post excerpts from these regularly.

[don]

Re: Nytimes paywall starting March 28th

That sounds like a systematic approach to gathering what interests you. As you know, our primary news creating (manufacturing) entities are quite few in number. Most service don't investigate anything, they skim what the few others are investigating. (investigating is too positive a term for most of what they're doing.) Opinions, blogs, etc. are something all together different. I'd like to visit some those sites of yours if you're willing to share. It can always get better. (Must have been nice when there were scores or more of independent journals in America)

Did check out Google news. Not bad, not bad at all.

[don]

Re: Nytimes paywall starting March 28th

the collapsing investigative reporting resources of America . . .

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Nytimes paywall starting March 28th

Every NYT story I read is posted here in the free news section of iTulip by don.

ha!

don, with all the articles you post, I've often wondered how you get your news.


http://english.aljazeera.net is good for asia. it's coverage of japan has been excellent.

I wish there were better news aggregators out there. http://www.realitychex.com is not bad, but must be based out of d.c. with all the links to the washington post.

sources that fell away...herald trib, washington post, all things considered replaced by google news, guardian, democracy now.