Unlike the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, The Post has traditionally been a local business, pulling in large amounts of local advertising from merchants eager to reach the print audience. By contrast, 90 percent of The Post’s online audience is outside the Washington area.Why The Washington Post is going to start charging frequent readers of its site. Meanwhile, their building’s still for sale.
More than a year and a half later, it’s clear the New York Times’ paywall is not only valuable, it’s helped turn the paper’s subscription dollars, which once might have been considered the equivalent of a generous tithing, into a significant revenue-generating business. As of this year, the company is expected to make more money from subscriptions than from advertising — the first time that’s happened.Bloomberg’s Edmund Lee • Discussing the success of the New York Times paywall, which has done something very surprising — it’s allowed the New York Times to make more than half of its overall revenue from subscriptions, rather than the traditional 80 percent advertising/20 percent subscriptions balance that has traditionally defined newspapers. That’s good for a number of reasons, with the biggest being that the New York Times is no longer as overly reliant on ad dollars to sell its news. That’s an awesome spot for the Times to be, but the real question: Does that mean anything for papers that aren’t the Times, which may be a tougher sell than a paper of record?
The Missourian’s change to a pay model is consistent with industry trends; its method, with everything free for the first 24 hours of publication, is experimental and reflects a core mission of this newspaper to test innovative practices for the news industry.Tom Warhover, executive editor of the Columbia, Mo. Missourian • Regarding the paper’s interesting take on paywalling its content — everything will be free for the first 24 hours, but after the one-day mark, you hit a paywall. (The model corresponds with a suite of new digital apps for the publication.) This is a relatively untried model — most outlets in recent years have preferred to, instead, follow the New York Times’ successful metered paywall model. But the Missourian, which is run by the University of Missouri and staffed by J-school students, is the perfect testbed for an experimental model. The paper was one of the first newspapers to go online, and has a long tradition of trying new things. So it’ll be interesting to see what they do.
NYT tightens the paywall vice: Make those 10 articles count. (Though we admit that it’s totally one of the few newspapers in the country worth subscribing to.)
But Ms. Colvin’s frustrations were also more particular than that: she worried that her accounts of indiscriminate bombing by forces loyal to the Syrian government were not able to reach the widest possible audience.
Days before her death, she asked a fellow journalist to sidestep the online subscription requirement for her newspaper, The Sunday Times of London, and share her latest article from Syria with nonsubscribers. “Getting the story out from here is what we got into journalism for,” she wrote in a message that was republished on Wednesday by Bill Neely, the international editor for ITV News in Britain.
“You have my permission to post it, as in I will take the firing squad in the morning,” Ms. Colvin said, indicating that her bosses might object to the reposting of her articles elsewhere. “I’m just not able to technically do it, as I am still in Baba Amr.”
This puts a seriously human face on a problem widely plaguing the newspaper industry — how do you get your stories read and paid for? The Times’ paywall, implemented by News Corp. in 2010, is the worst of the worst, as you can’t even read excerpts from the stories without a subscription. Newspapers need to make money, yes, but when does the public interest, which Marie Colvin was deeply interested in, take precedent?
We’ve never had The Boston Globe have its own front door in the digital space. It’s always been integrated with Boston.com. This was an opportunity to build something brand-new and to have it front and center and really do justice to the brand promise The Boston Globe offers to its readers.Boston Globe publisher Christopher M. Mayer • On the paper’s launch of its own Web site this morning — a paywall-laden one that smartly separates the company’s newspaper content from Boston.com content that might work better on the Web. Boston.com is paywall-free and still serves breaking news, blogs and the whole bit. Bostonglobe.com focuses on the newspaper itself. It’s an interesting separation and we’re curious to see how it works out for them. The Boston Globe’s parent, the New York Times Company, famously started up a successful paywall experiment for the mothership paper. (Quote from a paywall-laden article, but there’s free registration for the next couple weeks; the source article links to the free Boston.com piece.) source (via • follow)
A Hulu for News?: Martin Nisenholtz, the senior vice president for digital operations at the Times, offered up this sentiment while speaking at Newspaper Association of America convention today. We must say that we find the idea utterly bizarre, because it already exists. It’s called Google News.
For the first four weeks, you too can get access to the NYT’s vast supply of Brooklyn-discovery stories and trend pieces about trends nobody knew existed — for just a dollar. And be quick about it. The NYT’s paywall hits us plebes at around 2 p.m. EST. source
The fine print in the NYT’s paywall: Have you been wondering to yourself, “Who the heck would pay $260 extra to subscribe to the iPad version of the New York Times?” So have a lot of people. From a distance, the price plan makes little sense and makes the paper nearly as expensive as the dead-tree version (which costs $770 a year for the seven-days-a-week edition outside of NYC). But Poynter’s Damon Kiesow has a really interesting take on the matter which a lot of people haven’t considered: What if the Times wants to discourage mobile app use by pricing them at a premium, specifically with the iPad version? (above pic taken by Robert Scoble — yes, that’s the man’s hand)
» What this all means to you: Now, if you’ve ever used an iPad, it’s pretty clear that the New York Times Web site is as good, if not better than, the NYT iPad app, at least for now. And if they want to further emphasize the tablet-y nature of the iPad, they already have that in the form of Times Skimmer. Furthermore, Apple doesn’t take a 30 percent cut out of Web-based subscriptions. Damon Kiesow’s perfectly apt reasoning, then, is that the NYT is trying to de-emphasize the App Store by pricing people out of that direction. And you know what? He’s right. The NYT Web site will work fine on the iPad. There is an advantage to using NYT’s app on your cell phone, so that’s kept at a more reasonable cost, but the NYT’s plan to focus on the Web over the app? Sneaky.
Some of them even send us checks unsolicited. I have this woman in Canada who’s sent me two $50 checks because she doesn’t understand why she can get our journalism for free. Each time I have to tell her I can’t accept the check.New York Times Corp. Chief Advertising Officer Denise Warren • Discussing the NYT’s paywall plan, which hits around the end of the month. Hey, Denise, if you guys won’t take the money, we’ll put it straight in our pockets! In all seriousness, though, read the piece — it does a great job explaining the mindset of the NYT as they decided to try the paywall model once again. Key thing? Ad money in print is falling, and online isn’t keeping up. source (via • follow)
Here’s a hidden feature that shipped in...
Watch: PCB gets a visual shout out on GMA’s Yahoo/Tumblr...
Wrote a thing.
Hat tip to this headline writer.
Congrats Tumblr!
Don’t screw this up Yahoo.
In 2007, I was...
yeahnobutreally asks: Ah jeez, I got the joke. Plus we're taking the "free" internet for granted and publications are losing funding and readers. Their content wasn't free before the internet and now they're suffering. I'm sure this could be debated from both sides, but you have to admit going from a printed publication mainly purchased, to free online content available to anyone, anywhere has got to hurt your business. And I think it's selfish to tell the publishers to suck it up cuz you're not paying for their work/product.
» We say: I think that while the NYT’s paywall is put together like a paywall perhaps should be, I see the point of many students. When I went to school, copies of the NYT were very common on campus, especially in the J-School. I think though, that it’s a sensitive issue for a lot of people — to choose a really good paper like the NYT means they have to drop something else out of a tight budget. (Which was my original point …) At least the NY Times is keeping their content streams fairly open, unlike Newsday or the Times of London.
Letter that “young adult” Erin Taylor will regret writing or, If You Love Something, Spurn It Because It Isn’t Free.
Suck it up. You were just going to spend that $15 on buying ramen and doing laundry, anyway.
(EDIT: Because people keep getting offended by this post, we think it’s important to note that the intent of this post was to make a facetious, joking point about how college students have to choose between essentials and the NYT. To those unintentionally offended: We didn’t mean it the way you took it. Sorry. Sometimes subtlety is too subtle.)
New York Times paywall plans announced.If you are not a home delivery subscriber, you will have free access up to a defined reading limit. If you exceed that limit, you will be asked to become a digital subscriber.
This is how it will work, and what it means for you:
• On NYTimes.com, you can view 20 articles each month at no charge (including slide shows, videos and other features). After 20 articles, we will ask you to become a digital subscriber, with full access to our site.
• On our smartphone and tablet apps, the Top News section will remain free of charge. For access to all other sections within the apps, we will ask you to become a digital subscriber.
• The Times is offering three digital subscription packages that allow you to choose from a variety of devices (computer, smartphone, tablet). More information about these plans is available at www.nytimes.com/access.
• Again, all New York Times home delivery subscribers will receive free access to NYTimes.com and to all content on our apps. If you are a home delivery subscriber, go to http://homedelivery.nytimes.com to sign up for free access.
• Readers who come to Times articles through links from search, blogs and social media like Facebook and Twitter will be able to read those articles, even if they have reached their monthly reading limit. For some search engines, users will have a daily limit of free links to Times articles.
• The home page at NYTimes.com and all section fronts will remain free to browse for all users at all times.
For more information, go to www.nytimes.com/digitalfaq.
Just an FYI, we don’t plan to stop linking to NYT because of the paywall. We think the metered plan will probably be enough for most of our readers. And we’ll gladly say that NYT, of all sites, is worth the $15/month.
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