New York Times Halves Monthly Free Article Views To Ten 178
An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times has announced that, starting in April, visitors to NYTimes.com will only be able to access 10 free articles a month, down from 20 articles currently. The NYTimes paywall was put into effect last year, and seems to have been a success, with nearly half a million digital subscriptions to all of Times Co.'s websites; this despite the fact that the paywall is trivial to circumvent (for example, by deleting all cookies from nytimes.com)."
The submitter included a link to the WSJ article on the change, which appears to also be paywalled.
Oh Well (Score:5, Insightful)
And? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's working for them, that's actually pretty cool. Those who want it pay or circumvent; those who don't move on to other options. '
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the way it's supposed to work?
"trivial to circumvent" (Score:5, Insightful)
you realize that for most people deleting cookies only from nytimes.com is technically challenging
and even if it isn't, the hassle factor is enough to move people to buy
Good: the writers get paid. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm glad the NYT has found a way to get money for its content. Internet advertising is slowly being recognized as bunk because most of the people spending a lot of time on the internet are not going to buy anything. They're usually retired, young, or unemployed. As a result, the writers aren't going to get paid if the newspaper relies on advertising, and this means that there will be less quality writing for the rest of us. It's better to pay for something and have it be of a higher quality.
The real travesty is that they paid $40 million for that goofball paywall [slashdot.org].
Get Over It Already (Score:5, Insightful)
I pay almost zero attention to east coast media; mostly because they don't pay any attention to the west coast (except for Hollywood).
Yeah and us midwest coast people that read The Star Tribune? We should just totally ignore everything that's happening on the West and East coasts because attention isn't focused on us, the reader, one hundred percent of the time? I shouldn't partake in the enjoyment of the New York Times' excellent book reviews or international coverage because none of those happen to be about me where I live? I shouldn't read the LA Times because even though their 1992 riot coverage won them a Pulitzer, they didn't cover the riots that followed my college hockey team's national championship loss?
Seriously, this East coast/West coast bullshit has got to stop. Get over yourselves and appreciate good news with good factchecking and a budget to send your reporters to be first hand sources.
Re:And? (Score:3, Insightful)
It is. But the larger question is, can this model be useful for everybody. You must remember how a lot of people were (and are) of the opinion that this won't work in the long term. NYT has been kind of pigheaded about this... and it's apparently working. For them.
So... can anybody copying this can expect the same? Is there a formula that can tell us with some precision, how many of your readers you can expect to retain if you implement a paywall? That's the interesting part.
Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)
It will work for anybody in a similar position: producing a lot of content that people want to read, and are willing to pay to do so. Since NYT is unlikely to release detailed numbers, the only formula is trial and error to find the right balance between alienating customers and attracting them. (And this move indicates that they're still refining that balance.)
Re:Oh Well (Score:5, Insightful)
The question I have is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Cost of print subscription cheaper than digital? (Score:4, Insightful)
Am I reading this wrong? It seems that the cost of a print subscription is $3.85 a week but INCLUDES the $35/mo (holy crap that's expensive) digital subscription.
It kind of baffles me 500,000 people paying as much as ISP service for access to a single newpaper? Are they including print subscriptions in that number