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September 22, 2005
Charging for Columnists: Notes and Comment on the Launch of TimesSelect"If one faction wanted to go the Wall Street Journal's pay wall route, and another wanted to remain free like the Post, then TimesSelect is not a hypothesis for how to succeed on the Web, but just a mid-point between competing theories. That alone is reason to worry."“Despite all that has happened, I still think that The New York Times has a stature and a position of journalistic authority that is greater than any news organization in the world. Could that be destroyed? I believe that it could be.”— Alex S. Jones, former reporter, New York Times, co-author of The Trust, a history of the Sulzberger family, in Business Week, January 17, 2005. I agree with Jones: it could be. And I have some thoughts on the launch of TimesSelect, the new premium content package from the New York Times, which throws the columnists behind a pay wall, and opens the archives to Select subscribers. (For the basics, see the Washington Post’s story; Len Apcar’s note to users.) “We have been tested many times in our 154-year history as we are being tested now.” That’s Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. and CEO Janet Robinson in Tuesday’s note to staff about a new round of layoffs at New York Times Company (500 jobs company-wide.) The launch of TimesSelect is a big part of “being tested.” On the line is the company’s wisdom about itself, the Web and the place of its flagship newspaper in the new information order. It will be easy enough to know whether it’s working. How many people sign up and pay the $49.95? It will be harder to know if there’s damage to the Times brand caused by the new pay walls. “He’s looking for significant numbers,” writes Editor & Publisher’s Steve Outing about Martin Nisenholtz, president of New York Times Digital. “The goal won’t be met with TimesSelect subscription numbers in the tens of thousands, Nisenholtz says; it needs to be in the hundreds of thousands in the early years, and even more over the long term.” There’s your scorecard. I think they might reach their goals, at least at first. (For some users the archive alone will be worth the price.) Outing explains the bet: One factor that Nisenholtz thinks will encourage people to pay to keep reading the Op-Ed crew is the notion of the “Times loyalist” — perhaps 1.5 million to 2 million readers who are devoted to the New York Times brand, and spend significantly more time reading NYTimes.com than they do other news sites. With them, he claims, their willingness to fork over “the equivalent to buying a few martinis” for an annual subscription could be expected. As I said, they’re being tested on this logic, and what it might overlook even where it makes sense. The National Review’s Jonah Goldberg thinks it plays narrowly to the (liberal) Times base. If liberals are more willing to buy premium access, and conservatives less, doesn’t that make TimesSelect an ideological purifier? Outing: “Steve Klein, an online journalism professor at George Mason University, says one of his students raised an excellent point during a class discussion this week about TimesSelect: ‘Even if the Times picked up most of its existing online readers, how are they going to grow a new generation of online Op-Ed readers if they keep the columnists behind a pay firewall?’ Good question.” Yes, it is. My own questions start with this sentence in the corporate side’s press release, describing TimesSelect as “a new product offering subscribers exclusive online access to the distinctive voices of the Op-Ed, Business, Metro and Sports columnists of The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune (IHT).” The phrase “exclusive online accesss” advertises two different goods. The first good is the work of the Times columnists themselves. The proposition that some will pay for that is hard to prove until you try, but it’s simple to understand. The second good being advertised is exclusivity. You, the lucky TimesSelect subscriber, have access to these voices. Others do not. The value proposition there is muddled. If we prize up-to-date information about petroleum markets, we might value it more—and pay a premium—if the news is exclusively available to paying customers; but do we value Nicholas D. Kristof’s column more if he’s an “exclusive?” We don’t. In fact, it’s probably the reverse. If everyone is reading a columnist, that makes the columnist more of a must have. If “everyone” isn’t, less of a must. “Exclusive online access” attacks the perception of ubiquity that is part and parcel of a great columnist’s power. In his prime Walter Lippmann was called “the name that opened every door.” Nick Kristof’s brand of human rights journalism, which depends on the mobilization of outrage, is simply less potent if it can’t reach widely around the world, and pass by every door. Staci Karmer of PaidContent.org interviewed Nisenholtz just before the big launch: Despite the darkest musings of the blogosphere about dissolving the Op-Ed columnists’ relevancy by removing them from the free market, Nisenholtz insists, “Tom Friedman’s ideas, Maureen Dowd’s ideas are going to be as vibrant in my view, as important the day after as the day before.” At another point, he says, “I hope there are enough people who matter in the world who are going to continue to read the (22) columnists.” [He knows] the site is going to take an immediate traffic hit. “We think that within six months we’re going to be right back to where we were are now,” says Nisenholtz. We’ll see. I’m not aware that Maureen Dowd has any ideas, beyond comparing politics to high school. She has a sensibility, and readers may go to her for that. If you want me to pay for your author’s sensibility, I might, if you’ve signed up Isaiah Berlin. It’s not often discussed, but the free Web edition has transformed the work of foreign correspondents, and of columnists like Kristof and Thomas L. Friedman who write from abroad. Say you’re reporting from Cairo and based there. Pre-Web, only a handful of people in Egypt would ever read your story; they would get it three weeks later in an envelope mailed from the U.S. Most of those you interviewed—your sources—would never see the results of your reporting. Although they might be keen to know what the American press said about them, the material was out of reach. Now, because of the Web edition, everyone in government, business and academic life has read your stories— and plenty of taxis drivers and schoolteachers, too. From Cairo to Ohio, readers bring to the transaction an awareness of all the other readers doing the same thing. The Times Company’s press release does not seem to realize that “exclusive” opinions are not more valuable than “widely-circulated” ones— and it’s possible they will count for less. The other phrase that spoke to me from the official-ese was “distinctive voices.” As in “the distinctive voices of the Op-Ed, Business, Metro and Sports columnists.” But how distinct are these voices? Does Bob Herbert write about forgotten Americans in a distinctly different voice, or in a NAACP-big-city-outraged-liberal-Democrat one? If I were Martin Nisenholtz, one of my worries would be over-estimating the marketplace value, and misstating the unique selling proposition of a Herbert, a Maureen Dowd, a David Brooks. When I read Dave Anderson in sports he sounds like every other sports columnist, even when he’s on target. Big-traffic bloggers Glenn Reynolds and Hugh Hewitt were discussing this on Hewett’s radio show this week. The question was whether flood-the-zone, real time reportage by weblog was the way to go for newspapers faced with a big news event like an approaching storm. Reynolds: The New York Times thinks it’s going to make money selling op-eds, but hard news reporting is the killer ap for news media organizations. If they want to come up with opinion, they’re competing with guys like me, and we can kick Paul Krugman’s butt any day. If they do hard news gathering, and they actually report what’s happening, and they report it straight and fast, they can go toe to toe with blogs pretty darn well. I assure you, they are chuckling in newsrooms about just possibly being able to compete “toe to toe” with bloggers in reporting a big moving story. Maybe they shouldn’t be chuckling, but they are. I think Reynolds was basically right about the columnists and kicking Krugman’s butt. (See Business Week Online: “Is Paul Krugman Worth $49.95?”) If I draft a PressThink post on a topic in the news, and it doesn’t offer a lot more than a typical newspaper op-ed, I won’t click “publish.” (Example: compare this column on Katrina and the press to this post.) That’s part of my unique selling proposition: if you’re in the market, you get more if you stop by PressThink. Similarly, Josh Marshall is far more valuable to me than Krugman and Herbert combined. They have been slow to make best use of the Web. He’s been Web-savvy and smart. Mickey Kaus of Kausfiles: “like reading a lefty-liberal-economist? Can’t pay for Krugman? Try … Brad De Long!” Kaus has an amusing riff on an alternative “monetizing” scheme, called TimesDelete: …for $19.95 a month, say, TimesDelete’s premium subscribers could vote on one op-ed columnist to take an extended vacation. If more people picked Krugman rather than Brooks, Krugman would get his salary plus a bonus on the condition that he maintain a meaningful silence for several weeks. The race would be tight every month, I should imagine, with Republicans and Democrats trying to outvote each other. But you can’t play if you don’t pay! Steve Lovelady of CJR Daily said he doesn’t get it, either. From a comment thread at PressThink: Opinionated commentary is a dime a dozen. The blogosphere is crawling with it, of every stripe. As well as rants, screeds, and moonbat manifestos of all sorts. That’s not a USP (unique selling point) for the big news engines. Their USP is the depth and breadth of their reporting. So why give away your USP for FREE while you’re CHARGING for the stuff — opinions — that the world already has too much of? The entire field of opinion writing has been transformed by the Web, and it’s not just the bloggers doing their thing. Take a look at this page, and imagine the Times columnists have gone missing. Is that a problem for the page, or more of a problem for the Times? Then there’s the blogger override of the pay wall. No one knows how often this will happen. But check out this site, Never Pay Retail, which is nothing but links to where you can find the Times Columnists for free on the Web. The Times realized that the value of the columnists had to be enhanced. So they pressed them to do more for subscribers. Business Week called it “the big draw” in the $49.95 package. (I disagree: the archive dating back to 1981—soon back to 1851—is the big draw.) Here’s the added value they forsee: more interaction and multi-media features involving the columnists. BW says: … columnists will engage in extracurricular activities with subscribers. John Tierney will oversee a book club and related discussions. Paul Krugman will host online classes pertaining to international finance, under the rubric “Money Talks.” The sports columnists will gather for a twice-monthly chat. In “Everyone’s a Critic,” Frank Rich will post online observations and invite readers to debate sundry cultural topics, and Thomas L. Friedman will respond to reader mail. Does it seem to you they’re having trouble with the value proposition? It seems so to me. The Times columnists aren’t experts or oracles. Thomas Friedman isn’t an authority on globalization; he’s a artful rhetorician, building stories around facts. Much of his value derives from the perception that “everyone” is reading him. Eliot Pierce, the product manager for TimesSelect, made note of certain advantages in fewer, better readers. (Via E & P.) Pierce says the TimesSelect model gives him hope that the interaction that columnists will promote through these initiatives will be of a high quality. High-level conversation isn’t impossible with a mass free audience, he says, but the smaller pool of people paying for this likely will be more engaged; there likely will be less potential for flames and nastiness. There’s some truth in that. Still, none of the columnists seem inclined to the “readers know more than I do” perspective that ex-columnist Dan Gillmor developed by blogging. That would be an exciting departure. At Media Bistro, David Hirschman interviewed Diane McNulty, Group Director of Community Affairs and Media Relations, who made this statement: TimesSelect subscribers can create or view hyperlinks to the full text of the columns. Non-subscribers will see a brief summary of the column. We expect to have an affiliate program for bloggers in place by the end of the year that will offer bloggers financial incentives to link to TimesSelect content. Hmmm. Financial incentives to link to the Times… Say, if I link to David Brooks today because the Times offers me money to do so, isn’t that like payola? I e-mailed McNulty for an explanation, and what I got was a reversal. Apparently she misspoke in the interview. There are no incentives to link to Times content: Jay, Thanks for asking about that. Okay, thanks: so no payola. (Staci Kramer has more.) Meanwhile, Andrew Sullivan wrote this on Tuesday of debut week: “Memo to Arthur Sulzberger: I would have linked to John Tierney’s excellent NYT op-ed today on how Wal-Mart is better able to deal with natural disasters than FEMA. But only Times Select readers can read the link. So I won’t. Nyah nyah.” (See also JD Lasica.) But the more telling comment was his announcement of a deal he struck with the Washington Post: Here’s an interesting contrast: next Tuesday, this blog is going to be streamed to the Washington Post’s online opinion section. WaPo, unlike the NYT, is trying to reach out to bloggers and increase the interaction between old and new media. They approached me; and I’m always up for an experiment. WaPo will carry my lede item at any given time, and a couple of teaser headlines for the rest. I have no idea what to expect; and neither do they. But it’s one of the first real cooperative ventures between an independent blog and the MSM. Sullivan adds: “Ironic, isn’t it, that the day the NYT shuts its opinion pages off from free access, the WP actually opens its doors to independent bloggers?” Doc Searls: “This whole thing looks like an ugly political compromise between warring factions inside the paper.” That’s my sense too, based on what I have heard. If one faction wanted to go the Wall Street Journal’s pay route, and another wanted to remain free like the Post, then TimesSelect is not a hypothesis for how to succeed on the Web, but a mid-point between competing strategies. That alone is reason to worry. After Matter: Notes, reactions & links… I was a guest on Christopher Lydon’s radio show, Open Source, where the topic for the hour was TimesSelect (Oct. 5). With Rich Meislen, associate managing editor for Internet Publishing at the Times, Staci Kramer of PaidContent.org, and Ben Hammersley of the Guardian blog section. Summary and audio. Micah Sifry: “The TimesSelect experiment, which I think will fail, is a great example of how the business side is dominating the editorial side of that institution online.” Craig Newmark of craigslist.org at his craigblog: This applies, or maybe contrasts, to how at craigslist we figure out what to charge for. In our case, we ask people. We’re doing that right now regarding charging apartment brokers in NY. Users, what should we charge for? I wonder what would have happened if the Times popped the question at the site. (Here, for example.) Newmark also says that estimating the value of a columnist “reminds me of the tipping point in the value of fax machines… they became much more valuable when a lot of people had ‘em.” Why trackback is dead. It’s not just the spam. Scroll down and you’ll see this post has three official trackbacks, according to Movable Type software I’m using. But a BlogPulse tracking search shows 29 blogs that linked to it. (Google blog search shows 27, but many duplicates in there.) A mechanism that records ten percent of what it’s tracking is dead. Is there something I’m missing? Dan Gillmor of Bayosphere: “Count me among the naysayers.” He calls it the “anti-Web pay-wall.” Ben Vershbow replies at if:book. (Institute for the Future of the Book) … the Times is seriously overvaluing its columnists, or worse, de-valuing them by placing them behind a pay wall. If I were Tierney, or Kristof or Dowd, I would be furious. It makes them look like preened show dogs when everyone else is duking it out in the commons for all to read. Seems like a one-way ticket to irrelevance. Plus, soon they’re going to have to take part in all sorts of online chats and seminars with Select subscribers - I bet they’ll really start to chafe then. Doc Searls replies at his weblog. His position is: needs more tinkering. “There’s a market model that will work someday. The Times is right to try figuring one out.” Charge for the news, recycle the olds. That’s the same business we’ve always had in the daily print news business, and I think it will leverage just fine on the Web. Makes a lot of sense. Italics are mine. Doc e-mails, Sep. 25: “The real challenge will come when the car companies, financial houses and big retail houses stop spending money on newspapers. Won’t happen instantly, but it will happen. In fact, it’s happening already with retail, I believe.” Mickey Kaus says: “We Want the Overnights!” Q.: Does the NYT have the subscriber totals for the triumphant first days of TimesSelect, its new pay-for-columnists feature? More (Sep. 25): Kaus keeps the pressure on. “TimesSelect has apparently shut down maintenance of the highly useful library of Paul Krugman columns at the UnOfficial Paul Krugman Archive…” Plus (Sep. 26) Kaus on what Chinese authorities could learn from TimesSelect. Kos weighs in, calling the Times the “textbook definition of stupid.” They take the one part of the paper that is a commodity — the opinion — and try to charge for that. No Krugman? Who cares. Give me Brad DeLong. No Bob Herbert? Whatever. Give me James Wolcott or anyone at the American Prospect or Washington Monthly. Or any of the thousands of columnists at other newspapers, and the tens of thousands of political bloggers. “In this world, no one is special, no one is irreplaceable,” says Markos. “In the old world of syndicated columnists, that might bruise some egos.” Steve Outing at the Poynter site: I must say, it’s disturbing to see some of my favorite columnists vanish except for a single website. (I did purchase a TimesSelect subscription.) While I think that enough people will sign up for TimesSelect for the Times to make some decent money, I fear that the paper’s influence — led by its most known writers who have had worldwide reach — will wane. PressThink, A Little Detail in the Sale of About.com to the New York Times. (Feb. 20, 2005) More and more, we hear about a big battle that is either here or coming inside the Times over whether to charge users for online access, as the Wall Street Journal currently does. If that happens and the Washington Post remains free, the paths of those two great news organizations will, I believe, diverge. I think they are diverging. Best blog post I have seen on this is the subtle analysis from chez Nadezhda: I expect the difference in the two approaches will in the long run have an impact on the content of the two newspapers and ultimately their philosophy of what it means to be a news organization. The NYT proposes to continue to “deliver” its “product.” The Post, by contrast, is becoming a portal to a dynamic network of content, only a portion of which is home-grown… Well worth it if you’re interested in the two paths. Go read Karl Martino: Newspaper’s “Black Tuesday.” You will be smarter and maybe even inspired. Also see on the newsroom cutbacks in Philadelphia Dan Rubin in Blinq: Newspaper Days, a smart survery of reactions to the bleak economic news. Bill Quick at Daily Pundit is skeptical: “I give it six months.” Hmmm. Soccer Dad on getting around Times select. Bob Cauthorn at Corante, Newspapers, meet precipice. It’s not about “brand,” he says. That’s what they say when they don’t want to fix the product. If newspapers fix their print products circulation will grow — change format, revive local coverage, alter the hierarchical approach to the news, open the ears of the newsrooms and get reporters back on the street where they belong. If you want to get really daring, re-imagine print newspapers as a three-day a week product rather than as a seven-day a week product. Jon Friedman of Marketwatch on this week’s news about staff reductions: It should be noted that the same New York Times news release ended like this:
Posted by Jay Rosen at September 22, 2005 11:08 AM
Comments
I have my doubts as to the value of multimedia -- podcasting / video requires capabilities from pundits they may not have, and competing software standards and formats (QuickTime vs. RealPlayer vs. WMP) means they'll need more support staff, not less, to create and maintain the content. I also suspect they've missed an opportunity for true dialoguing. Are Times Select subscribers guaranteed the ability to post feedback or commentary on a columnist's work? Because I don't see a blog-style commenting feature mentioned on the TimesSelect solicitation page. Posted by: VictorWong at September 22, 2005 12:02 PM | Permalink As I indicated in the earlier thread, Times Select makes sense only as the first part of an eventual plan to make all (or almost all) of the NYTimes On-Line into a "subcription only" site. (a related question -- does anyone know how successful the Salon.com approach has been? ie providing "day-passes" allowing non-subscribers to read Salon's content if they sit through a net-ad.) From the Times Select page: New service? How is restricting access a new service. That's like calling China's content blocking a "feature". On one hand, it is easy to penetrate the wall as many bloggers are doing and posting "clean" free links to NYT op-eds (Perhaps their techies will work on this). Other bloggers are pasting entire op-eds onto their blogs stating that this constitute "fair use" as the wal is inteslf "unfair". At the same time, the whole thing did not appear to bother too many bloggers. There is other good stuff out there, mainly bloggers who know more about their subject (expertise) than any NYT editorialist. Posted by: coturnix at September 22, 2005 1:07 PM | Permalink If the goal is to boost revenue & brand-name value later after taking a supposedly temporary hit now, I just don't see it working. A Kausfiles reader who appears in the link you provide summarized much of what you're saying here quite well: Do we read the times op-ed page and argue with it because it's that good, or because we know that the NYT website gets 29 million readers a month (which few free sites do) and we want to comment on ideas that "most people are reading"... Another thing: washingtonpost.com isn't following a different strategy simply by keeping everything free. They are creating an entirely new system. It includes reporting, blogging, and multiple interactions with readers. As much as I criticize the Post from my generally righty perspective, I don't think many observers appreciate the scope of their offerings. It includes a new partnership with Technorati that carries a box next to stories, listing bloggers who have linked to it; online-only columnists; blogs by columnists, some of which permit reader comments; speciality blogs for events like the Supreme Court nominations; some behind-the-scenes snapshots that are actually interesting (I detest cartoonist Tom Coles' political views but I love a rough-draft feature I stumbled on the other day, showing him working out an idea that didn't make it to print); and many live chats every single day, both with Post staffers like Howard Kurtz and guests from all sides of the political spectrum. I mean it's overwhelming. A poor little right-wing-conspiracy blogger like myself can't even do a proper inventory, never mind a comprehensive critique. I have no idea how much money washingtonpost.com is losing on this right now, but operationally and strategically, it seems to me, they are in an utterly different league than the NYT. How lame does throwing a few columnists behind a subscriber wall look, in comparison? Can you say "buggy whip?" Posted by: Christopher Fotos at September 22, 2005 1:09 PM | Permalink The top Times Select articles at the moment are: MAUREEN DOWD BOB HERBERT THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN! If only the left are paying for articles the Times might have a hard time being objective. The most exciting part of this move is the one you cited, which is the move to digitize the old NYT archives and put them online for a reasonable all-inclusive fee. Incidentally, this is only part of the Times Select that actually opens up more content to the web public, and it is the only bit I'd pay for. I probably will pay for it, too. I wouldn't necessarily assume that the change in pricing models for this vitally important and unique historical content isn't as significant as the firewalling off of the Times' Op-Ed columnists. Posted by: Matt Stoller at September 22, 2005 2:04 PM | Permalink If only the left are paying for articles the Times might have a hard time being objective. More to the point, if the readership decides that only the liberal columnists are worth paying for ... then sooner or later, some beancounter at the Times charged with holding down costs is going to ask the indelicate question: Posted by: Steve Lovelady at September 22, 2005 2:30 PM | Permalink My first reaction was "Halleluja! Tom Friedman is halfway to rehab." No more wistful stories about trains running on time in Singapore. And I thought it was somehow poignant that the paper expects readers to pay for the privilege of viewing videos introducing the columnists. The only opinion-related item that could induce me to part with $50 is the access log for the section. I wonder to what extent the content providers were involved in the decision. Posted by: weldon berger at September 22, 2005 4:00 PM | Permalink Ah, but if I pay (which I never will), I don't care for Krugman - he just has a keen sense of the obvious. His kind of stuff can be found - often with more detail, more links to the trustworthy sources, and even better insights - on many blogs. I am much more interested in getting my paws on the latest Brooks column so I can ravage his half-baked folk-sociology rants on my blog. Posted by: coturnix at September 22, 2005 4:07 PM | Permalink The wierd thing with the WSJ analogy is that the WSJ does exactly the opposite of the NYT approach: its free OpinionJournal site has its op-ed essays and editorials, while its reporting is behind the paywall. Posted by: Foobarista at September 22, 2005 4:19 PM | Permalink Foobarista: I guess they're both playing to their relative strengths. Posted by: weldon berger at September 22, 2005 9:09 PM | Permalink Taking Jonah Goldberg's conspiracy theory for a second: why would the Times want ideological purificiation? If they're making money off of a bunch of ideological conservatives who read Krugman and Dowd to be outraged (think the Rush principle in reverse), the Times makes money. On the topic in general: my life has become such a media gluttony that (as bad as it sounds) I rarely read anything that doesn't have an RSS feed anymore because it feels that inconvienent. I love Tom Friedman's writing style, I love the columns, but if it doesn't fit into my overall reading strategy, I can't get it done twice a week. I'm not sure why good-ol-fashioned advertising doesn't work. Posted by: Chase Nordengren at September 22, 2005 9:59 PM | Permalink It seems to me that publications made a wrong turning when going on to the web: the rates they charged for ads were way too low, and now they'd have a hard time raising them. Compared to rates for the print publication, they're a pittance. Why the steep discount? Why pay per clickthrough? I can't clickthrough the ad in the paper -- the advertiser has little way to really figure out whether I A) looked at it or B) bought anything because of it except in the most general sort of way. But print ads cost way more. If I ever started selling display ads on H2otown, I'd base what I charge on what the local paper charges, not what rates Google returns. And I'd use be a flat fee per time period, not clickthrough. I think very few publications can survive on clickthrough and Google ad traffic unless they write about an insanely keyword friendly topic 100% of the time. Not true for general interest publications. Posted by: Lisa Williams at September 22, 2005 11:27 PM | Permalink Back in 1996, I sat in meetings with my publisher (I was the editor in chief of a state magazine) and talked about how to do a web presence. Granted, it was very early in this emerging platform. But people came and made pitches. (Jeff Jarvis came to my little hole in the wall and made a pitch that we link up with Advance--for a fee.) It was very hard to see what would work at that time. I had ideas about the web, that putting up our 6,000 word story was not the best use, but maybe the listings or shorter pieces. All the publisher thought about was money. How could we do this fast and easy without losing, and preferably making, money? I think that's the Times mentality today. They didn't really consider the big picture, the impact on the rest of the business. They didn't look hard at what other places are doing, or think about what would happen next. Instead, they assumed the position of the bigfoot newspaper, and figured they'd take their most emailed stories and make them inaccessible. That's a pretty flat-earth view of the web. They remind me of me and my publisher, back in 1996. Incidentally, my best suggestion was to take our listing of bridal reception sites that we published, and then sell links to the sites' homepaages for a small fee. Making money off links. It was actually the right idea, but I don't think we ever did it. Looks to me like the WSJ got it right seveal years ago. Pay for hard news, get the opinion for free. But we knew they were better business people. Posted by: Jake at September 23, 2005 10:09 AM | Permalink The Economist has a pretty good model; most articles have a free sentence about what they are about (with a Title), and a few of them are free. Others are open to subscribers. But while I like the Economist, I think Glenn plus other bloggers does a better job. Most news IS, and will be, INFOTAINMENT. Unless it changes a decision you make, and little news does that, it has no direct value. News junkies prolly have a form of vanity "knowledge superiority", where we think we're better because we know more. But if knowlegeable folk disagree about a policy, like SS privatization or war in Iraq, why should a less knowlegeable person think gaining more info will help them make a better decision/ vote? Only if they enjoy arguing with others who are interested in the same policy. Most "normal" folk would rather just root for the home team in the upcoming game. Posted by: Tom Grey - Liberty Dad at September 23, 2005 10:52 AM | Permalink Foobarista: The wierd thing with the WSJ analogy is that the WSJ does exactly the opposite of the NYT approach: its free OpinionJournal site has its op-ed essays and editorials, while its reporting is behind the paywall. What's valuable today? Information that comes with a high degree of confidence and carries predictive power. What's parsley? Politicized opinion, infotainment, stenographic reporting and "analysis" of the obvious. I think we are in the middle of a paradigm shift that will divide information and commentary into two basic categories: 1. Basic, "unwarranteed" communication, which will continue to be too cheap to meter; 2. Value-added information, which will abandon our Old School value of "fairness" for a model based on the daily intelligence briefing. When we talk about "objectivity," we tend to talk about its limits. We don't tend to talk about its value. When we talk about commentary, we talk about its slant. We don't tend to talk about its perceptiveness. Our current frame of reference is a newspaper/broadcast model that is based on certain assumptions about "gatekeeper functions," "credibility," "balance," and the mass audience. When you adopt an intelligence agency perspective, the information gatherer and the information analyst are working for a specific end user, not a general, passive audience. This is a radically different relationship. Your loyalty is to your subscriber, not to your sources, not to your political friends. Your value -- your continued employment, for that matter -- is attached to the quality and utility of your information and your insights. People will pay for such content, and the networked media makes it possible for more people to access such services. These are, ultimately, the "editors" described in the EPIC 2014 animation. Will people pay for Times Select? Not unless it has this function. In fact, I don't understand Times Select at all, unless you connect it to your circulation department. If I subscribe to the NYT print edition and I'm on the road in Portland, do I have to pay for Times Select to read Dowd? If so, how stupid is that? Posted by: Daniel Conover at September 23, 2005 12:15 PM | Permalink Christopher mentioned it, but the WAPO-Technorati partnership listing bloggers who have linked to their stories is brilliant. Fully one-half (of my admittedly small) readership is now coming from WaPO; which, of course, means that I am now reading and writing about WaPo reporting instead of the Times. So now the flow of audience is two-way, and I am also in the habit of seeing what every other blogger is writing about that story -- which is expanding that circle of information sharing. If the goal is to build an community of readers/writers and thus stregthen their brand, WaPo is where it is on-line right now. Posted by: Daniel Kreiss at September 23, 2005 12:58 PM | Permalink courtnix feels none of the Times columnists are experts, echoing Jay's point. But Krugman is, in fact, an expert when he's writing about economics. You might not agree with his opinion, it IS an expert opinion. KirkH appears to feel mentioning the President's name is a sign of liberal bias. That's just strange. Posted by: 16 at September 23, 2005 5:26 PM | Permalink Daniel K: I agree: the Post is way ahead at this point, and at peace with their decisions so far. Could you explain how that technorati deal works from your end? How does it end up getting you readers? Daniel Conover: Great post. I think what's hard to convey to people is how different the transaction between "journalist" and "public" (readers, users) could actually be. Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 23, 2005 5:34 PM | Permalink The issue that bugs me the most about this decision to put content behind a paywall is the implication for the future of free knowledge on the Internet. The most amazing thing about the Web is that it is extremely democratic; there are very few examples where your income has an impact on what you are able to read and what you are not. The WSJ is one and now we have the NYT. My fear is that this is part of a potentially larger trend to a class system on the Internet, where those who can't afford the $50 a year fees for news sources aren't able to see what a millionaire can. Increasingly we are seeing a digital divide between those who can afford high speed and the others being left behind with their dialup, limiting what they can access on the net. We do not need to exacerbate the situation. There is no option for a Salon style day pass, where you subject yourself to an ad before viewing the full content. This is a locked door and if they manage to be successful at making money off of it, then it will encourage others to follow suit. Posted by: Julia Rosen at September 23, 2005 5:41 PM | Permalink D. Conover hit the nail on the head. I subscribe to WSJ online but didn't even consider Times Select even though I used to (a week ago) be a daily reader of the New York Times online. Glen Reynolds may have sounded arrogant when he said he could kick Krugman's butt in an op-ed battle but he's right, I've been reading Instapundit instead of NYTimes for the last week. The only thing of real value now offered by the Times is their encyclopedic archive. An archive that will soon have to compete with the growing usefulness of Wikipedia. Hey that's my nice, Julia Rosen. Also doing business as Political Rugger. Thanks, J. Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 23, 2005 7:00 PM | Permalink Gosh, if the NYT really wants people to pay for its abundant content, why not try applying that hot new thing "editing" to its headlines, ledes, copy, Page 1 story selection, Page 1 layout, and "A"-section internal organization? There's little sign of an editor's hand in any of this -- unlike in the LAT, Washington Post, or WSJ. The Gray Lady is disorganized, almost unreadable, and a waste of unthinkable talent. Big mistake to lock up the paper's single asset (columnists) that everyone really wants to read. Posted by: A. Reader at September 23, 2005 7:20 PM | Permalink
I am sure glad to have downloaded this MS freebie from the MS downloads [security] site. They scan me for everything every night and it's free. How would you like to be *scanned* every night? ok, ok, it's lame. 73 TG Posted by: TonyGuitar at September 23, 2005 7:55 PM | Permalink I used to love the New York Times, maybe not like a man loves a woman. But this decision to charge for columnists is one of the worst in a long-line of bad business decisions that proves the management there has no idea about the concept ot good will in business. From the way they handled the National Writer's Guild lawsuit over electronic rights to the way they screwed free-lance photographers on filing fees to the way they dumped some great reporters as stringers in the wake of Jayson Blair, to this. As I have already said on my own site, charging for the Times content ends the paper's century-long run as the national newspaper of record. It is over. The Times links were already getting too long to link to on a news site or blog. The pop up ads and fat, odd-sized ads just get in the way of the online reading experience. There are way too many other ways to get information and commentary to endure that, plus the new charges. The democracy argument is a good one too. What will students and grad students do? Turn to fast sites with AP and Reuters and the Washington Post. It is a sad, sad day in American publishing history. I'm sure they will pocket some cash up front, but I predict it won't work in the long-term. They will give it up in less than a year. Their circulation will fall too far too fast and the online advertising revenue will also drop precipitously. But quite frankly, that is not the worst of the problems for the Times. As I predicted in Editor & Publisher a couple of years ago, they just do not have the reporting power on the ground anymore. Watch for the New Orleans bureau of AP to walk with some Pulitzers this year. I could have been there for the Times, but no, they like to erect bureaucratic walls as bad as any government or corporate money machine. The Post is a better read now than the Bill Keller New York Times, except for the editorial page. If the post would find some decent columnists and started up a stringer network like the Times of old, they could own the title newpaper of record for the next few years in a way they never could in the days of print, since they never paid for regional printing and national distribution. Goodbye NYTimes. Sorry to see you go... At the appearance of TimesSelect, I wrote the Times in protest even though, as a home subscriber, I get the "goods" for free (for now). My position is that I would rather subsidize the freeloaders with my home subscription than to see Krugman's plug pulled. I think Jay, and Kos, are missing something when they bray that they value Josh Marshall's "Talking Points Memo" and/or Brad De Long's Blog more than a Krugman column. It undervalues the platform from which Krugman writes and his authority. Everyone in the Blog-sphere has an opinion, its just that Krugman's are more important because of who he is and where he is broadcasting from. Krugman, more than most old-line print columnists, reads and cites to the Blogs. There is always a time-lag, but his point is never to get there first, it is rather to legitimize the blog-bluster into something more concrete, through its appearance in Krugman's column. Bloggers don't like to face the disposable quality of their stuff (although they probably are grateful enough for it when they get something wrong). TPM and Kos and TBOG are often moving "stories"; Krugman is working on a deeper level, working in closer to the spine of national debate. When Kos, or Bilmon or some other blogger "goes deep", even when I think they are hitting their stride, it is hard to shake the feeling that they are out of their element and in over their heads. If TPM has more faster and more often than Krugman, well then any number of blogs beat PressThink to the punch with their rolling almost-daily critiques of print and television reporters, columnists, anchors and hosts. But these instantaneous snarks are qualitatively different than the deeper posts that appear here. It would be just as wrong to say, "Who needs PressThink when we have Atrios?" Frank Rich's columns do not suffer for being less immediate than others that work in his neighborhood. In fact, it is enhanced by Rich's ability to draw a breath, stew on things awhile, compose and then publish from that yet lofty platform. Of course, the Times isn't entirely senile and there is something to their view that the wide web is feeding off the Times credibility (even as they assault it). When the bloggers can meaningfully address and answer these types of mainstream columns, the whole endeavor is enhanced. Even though its only natural for the bloggers to say, "glad to see them gone -- means more for me" they'll miss them when they're gone. If the Times, WSJ and Salon can make good, more and more of the blogsphere will become pay-for-view, and some of the leading lights will cash out and go behind the wall, and the non-commercial blogsphere will drift and disapate. The Times wouldn't be broken up over it. Posted by: Mark J. McPherson at September 23, 2005 10:19 PM | Permalink Only millionaires can afford $50 a year? Wow, what a brilliant observation. How much does your cable cost, Ms. Rosen? Your magazine subscriptions? Your cell phone service? Pretty absurd extrapolation. I first wrote about this in January, and I'm sure I've linked it in here in a previous discussion, but given the mention of WSJ it bears repeating. WSJ can charge because it offers premium information on a subject that helps people make money. That's it. If it kept the financial analysis and reports behind the subscriber curtain and let the news out, it would make little to no difference in its subscription rates. People aren't paying for WSJ's general news. They're paying for its expertise in business news, and they're paying because they can charge it off as a business expense. And even with that significant advantage, WSJ's recent numbers suggest that its online subscriptions are cannibalizing from print. NYTimes has none of the criteria for paid content, so it can't charge for content without failing. It's very probably that simple. Posted by: Cal Lanier at September 23, 2005 11:50 PM | Permalink Question to ponder: If information is power and change is good, then it would follow that the Times blocking of information... is good? Ok, pass the aspirin. I just gave myself a headache. But seriously, another good piece, Jay. I've started a media analysis column for BlogCritics - the first one is here - You expressed some of the same problems with the short-sighted idea that I'm planning on covering. Posted by: Scott Butki at September 24, 2005 1:26 AM | Permalink Critics of registration have made many of the same arguments that are now being made about the TimesSelect model -- it will drive away readers, it will discourage linking, it violates the "open" nature of the web. NYTimes.com was one of the first, and for many years remained practically the only major news website to require registration. But look now: All the major newspaper sites have it. The doom and gloom predictions about diminished influence for registration sites have not come to pass, and the Times' competitors have come to the belated conclusion the Times was right all along. I think the Times was able to be a registration pioneer and still prosper partly because it's THE TIMES. People were willing to put up with a little extra frustration in order to read it. Might enough people also be willing to pony up a few dollars a month? You've got to keep in mind the power of the Times brand. Granted, that power has a limit, and the Times is testing it with TimesSelect. But if it worked once before... Posted by: P. Anderson at September 24, 2005 10:29 AM | Permalink Julia Rosen: My fear is that this is part of a potentially larger trend to a class system on the Internet, where those who can't afford the $50 a year fees for news sources aren't able to see what a millionaire can. Increasingly we are seeing a digital divide between those who can afford high speed and the others being left behind with their dialup, limiting what they can access on the net. We do not need to exacerbate the situation. There's an interesting relationship between information and users that may affect its value: Information is more valuable when you're in a position to do something with it. So who, generally, are the people who pay premiums for information? Investors. Private detectives. Consultants. Spies. Political operatives. Serious gamblers. Fantasy football players. For these classes, buying quality information is no different than buying advertising or raw materials. It's an investment on which they hope to generate a profitable return. On the other hand, most of us take little action on information. The only time we "act" on geo-economic-political news (which is the bulk of it) is when we vote. For us, information and news is what makes you look smart at parties. It helps you "get" The Daily Show. It's a combination of cultural connection and entertainment, and it's valuable... but it isn't directly profitable. The irony is, we already live in a world in which there are huge information gaps. The wealthy and powerful, who maintain their postitions via information, already have access to sources the rest of us lack. We don't see what they've got, so we don't generally miss it. Networked media gives us choices. We can receive the free info and commentary that everyone else receives, but if we want something more, we can choose to buy it. Who will buy premium information? People who see value in it. How much will that information cost? Whatever its market will bear. What is the effect of making premium information available via networked (multi-node) media? Generally, to increase access and decrease cost. The NYT made a poor choice with Times Select, and they'll have to learn their mistake and recover from it. Here it is, in a nutshell: They're selling politainment and tripe (Friedman), not premium information (Krugman being a notable exception). People can get politainment for free everywhere, so why would they pay for it? To me, the more interesting question becomes: In a fragmented, networked-media information economy, what will be the societal effects of having so many groups with so many disconnected frames of reference? Posted by: Daniel Conover at September 24, 2005 12:35 PM | Permalink I'm a subscriber and have been forever, paying hundreds of dollars a year. But in the last year or so I've had a strange thought flash through my mind each time I pick up the copy that has been laid at my door: "You should be paying me, New York Times." More and more ad-driven sections I would never read, carrying advertisements I never glance at, which are sent to me so I can be included in the subscriber figures, so the Times can charge the advertisers whatever it charges them, and leave me with the problem of recycling their paper, with their ads. How much of what they deliver is even intended for me? On Sundays it's probably, two, three percent. They should be paying me, right? Anyone ever had this thought? Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 24, 2005 4:13 PM | Permalink Jay, if I can answer for my own part the question you addressed to Daniel (and pardon me if this is blindingly obvious): Next to most every Post story, column, and in my experience online chats, there's a box called Who's Blogging. In theory every blogger who links to any of the above will automatically appear, in that box. (I do a technorati ping just to make sure). The box has room for three bloggers, and when the fourth link happens, the first guy is bumped off that box but there's a "more" link you can click on to see everyone. I say in theory because its behavior has been unpredictable. When it was first activated (a day or so after wapo.com sent press releases to bloggers, 24 hours before the announcement was made through normal channels), I could post an item with a link to a Post story and within 20 minutes I would turn up in that bloggers' box. Since then, however, it can take anywhere from five or six hours to "never" for a post to appear there. One of my blogger friends suggested this may be some kind of spam control (indeed, one of the early "Who's Blogging" links was to "Free Credit Report"). And since I often post links to 10 or more separate WaPo items a day, it may be that I'm thrown back in some kind of queueing system. That would help explain why, on occasions when I've posted to a story that only had my comment attached to it, it will still often take six hours before I show up. And yet when I check other bloggers' time stamp against when they show up, sometimes it happens much more rapidly. Another problem is the sheer number of bloggers who are discovering this. There are some stories that have had 50 or 60 bloggers commenting on it. It's a problem because any one blogger will get less attention for that story--and yet as a measure of interest, it's undeniable. In any case, it does generate hits coming in. I don't mean to be critical per se; this is a great partnership and my impression is that WaPo gets all this bloggy stuff so much more than the Times.
Posted by: Christopher Fotos at September 24, 2005 5:10 PM | Permalink P. Anderson wrote: I think the Times was able to be a registration pioneer and still prosper partly because it's THE TIMES. People were willing to put up with a little extra frustration in order to read it. You overestimate both the significance and the benefit of the registration wall to the Times. Sites like www.bugmenot.com were created (and became popular) specifically because people refused to debate the stupidity of the Times (and subsequently all papers) desire to hide behind a regwall. (Heck, I wrote a little script that automatically generated a useless registration whenever I wanted to read a Times story. Looking at my logs, it appears that I have created 287 of these registrations in the past 8 months alone.) You may consider that "being willing to put up with a little frustration". I consider it .005 seconds of CPU time well spent--and more than a little frustration to the Times marketers who were trying to make use of their registration database. I don't consider it an example of pioneering behavior by the Times. This continues to be my opinion now that they have supplemented their regwall with a paywall. The regwall was a minor nuisance easily circumvented (by token registrations for complacent readers, by BugMeNot for annoyed ones). The paywall will be just as easily circumvented by the "information wants to be free" crowd, but--far more damaging to the Times--will fade Sulzberger Jr's enterprise into irrelevance as the majority of people realize they simply don't need the Times brand of infopinoin. Posted by: DeMoreo Jones at September 24, 2005 6:51 PM | Permalink Thanks uncle, though I have less time these days to update my personal blog as a I am working full time on the California ballot campaign over at BetterCA.com. Only millionaires can afford $50 a year? Wow, what a brilliant observation. How much does your cable cost, Ms. Rosen? Your magazine subscriptions? Your cell phone service? Pretty absurd extrapolation. Yes I realize that $50 to most people who frequent this blog is not a lot of money, but we are not most people. Let's try this comparison, the current newstand price for the NYT is what a dollar? Anyone who wants to read Krugman can spend a pretty nominal amount for that priveledge. What is the net equivelent to that? It is time spent viewing an advertisement. For the NYT Select it is $50. Back to my original point, I am viewing this through the lense of it being a potential step towards more of these $50 fees. Pay walls existing where once information sources were freely accessable. If the NYT manages to make money off of their Times Select others will naturally follow suit. It is not just us bloggers that use the information that the NYT columnists provide. I can remember a number of occasions when I have cited a columnist doing research either as a high schooler or in college. Will those in the upper classes and libraries be the ones able to access something that used to be free? Where does this stop? What happens if it doesn't? Posted by: Julia Rosen at September 24, 2005 7:48 PM | Permalink Bingo ! One more reason Times Select will fail. There aren't too many people out there who can charge off Tom Friedman, or Paul Krugman, or David Brooks, as a business expense. Op-ed columnists are, by definition, trying to start a conversation. But, online, no one pays for a conversation -- not even this conversation. (Think about it; If they were willing to pay for opinion, or even for a clash of opinions, Jay would be a very rich man, and all of us contributors would be getting a cut of the take.) Posted by: Steve Lovelady at September 24, 2005 8:36 PM | Permalink Hmmm... I hadn't anticipated this, but it's interesting, if not actually really important: The Public Editor remains free, and he is currently waging a campaign against the Times columnists renowned difficulties with, shall we say, facts. The latest is here where he takes Krugman and Collins to task again, while writing at length on Stanley (the tv critic). Meanwhile, one can't actually read the offending columnists unless one is a Select subscriber. Tracking the Public Editor experiment will soon be like listening to half a telephone conversation, unless one is ready to shell out $50 (which I am not, of course, as I read the columnists for the most part with the same motivation that I stop to gawk at a car accident). Posted by: Lee Kane at September 24, 2005 9:27 PM | Permalink Steve -- I do agree that people in general won't pay for a conversation (though there are succesful "for pay" bulletin board sites out there). However, I think the Times columnists pretend to far more than being conversation starters. They are quasi-authorities, even in Krugman's case, real experts (or at least so-called) in their fields and they presume to offer up a lot more than an opinion but actual analysis. I think people will pay for very good, accurate analysis. In my opinion, however, the Times rogues gallery does not offer that, not seriously. It's mostly bomb-throwing. Really, would you trust the opinion of any of these people regarding anything you'd put your wallet up against? Well, we are about to find out, I think. As a counter example it seems there are at least some people willing to pay for, say, Strategic Forecasting and quite a bit too. They bill themselves as intelligence and analysis. If we had that from the Times columnists, I think the experiment would succeed. Posted by: Lee Kane at September 24, 2005 9:36 PM | Permalink Yes I realize that $50 to most people who frequent this blog is not a lot of money, but we are not most people. Let's try this comparison, the current newstand price for the NYT is what a dollar? Anyone who wants to read Krugman can spend a pretty nominal amount for that priveledge. What is the net equivelent to that? It is time spent viewing an advertisement. For the NYT Select it is $50. I am completely confused by this paragraph. Maybe I'm just too drunk to comprehend it. But if you're dropping a buck a day on the NYT, $50/year seems like a bargain. And, as you yourself point out, any vagrant can wander into the nearest public library and read it all for free. WHERE'S THE OUTRAGE? Look, it's easy for the iPod generation to squeal like stuck pigs whenever they're asked to pay a dime for anything. The 90s dotcom bubble apparently convinced many people that everything should be free and business plans are for suckers. Is TimesSelect a dumb idea? Of course it is, but not because NYT wants to turn a profit so it can pay its staff. The real story is that NYT has learned nothing from the rise of weblogs. They think the exclusive content is the stuff you can get anywhere else for nothing--the stuff that has no intrinsic value: opinion. (These are the same people who paid good money for About.com.) Even the archives--are they worth anything except to other journalists, or maybe college students who need a reference for their term papers? How many people sit at home thinking, "If only I could search the NYT archives for hurricane stories from 1982-1988! For free!" Answer: very few people. Pace Lovelady, most people won't even pay for information, which is everywhere, they'll just pay to be amused. Do NYT columnists amuse? Well, yes and no. Maybe the real story is that the columnist vocation is nearing the end of its lifespan. Can't say I'll miss it. Jay and others, I just wrote my second media analysis piece for Blog Critics. It should do a trackback when it's published. I made points similar to some of yours although I did not realize that coincidence until late in the game. Steve, I like your point about the business expense. That is one argument I've heard but have been unable to track down as far as something I can definitely prove. But my hunch is you're right. Posted by: Scott Butki at September 25, 2005 12:16 AM | Permalink "They should be paying me, right? Anyone ever had this thought?" Indeed. Never underestimate the power of the press. And recycle frequently, or wear shoes indoors. Posted by: Anna Haynes at September 25, 2005 1:41 AM | Permalink "Are Times Select subscribers guaranteed the ability to post feedback or commentary on a columnist's work?" Subscribers can comment, at least on some of the columns, with restrictions (you have to sign your real name, and you have to be polite).
Krugman helped win the ss debate, he's a Princeton economist and knows as much as anyone about his field. Brad DeLong is a liberal economist, but he doesn't have the platform that Krugman has. You can't best Dowd at what she does. Kristof was bureau chief all over the far east, he has so many contacts ... Anyway I don't see how you can compare a blog with a column, one is fast food, the other slow food, for the most part. " would you trust the opinion of any of these people regarding anything you'd put your wallet up against?" See Krugman above. Also, Kristof made a big difference for several Pakistani women of late. These writers aren't just opinion and anaylsis. They are also advocates.
The paper doesn't expect anything. You can view the videos or not, your choice. I have enjoyed them thus far.
Andrew Sullivan provides a good example of why I would rather read the NYT columnists than most blogs: the columnists are adults who know how to engage in civil discourse. "“In this world, no one is special, no one is irreplaceable,” says Markos. “In the old world of syndicated columnists, that might bruise some egos.”" Kos's ego is big enough. He ends his post saying that the NYT acts as if it wants to become obsolete -- "Wish granted," as if he alone decides who is important these days. My Times Select subscription came free with home delivery, so I was spared any shock the online readers have had. A month or two ago Bill Keller was on Charlie Rose saying that The Times was going to increase investigative reporting, which may improve their news pieces for those who are complaining. Posted by: ale at September 25, 2005 1:46 AM | Permalink Scott, I was the one who brought up business expense. I wouldn't call it an argument, though. I'm reasonably sure that research confirms it--or maybe I'm just having grad school flashbacks and it was never anything more than Vin Crosbie's reasonable and thus far entirely accurate criteria. So since I'm too lazy to spend more time finding out which, consider the intuitively obvious (with cites!). 15% of the print WSJ customers pay the extra bucks to get online access. That 15%, or about 200,000, constitutes half of all WSJ.com subscribers. So, are the other 200K who only subscribe to WSJ.com news junkies who pay for news online when they could get it from a thousand places free? Or are they previous print subscribers who decided the online version gave them everything they needed for less? If you're not sure, consider that their print subscriptions grew by 47. Not 47%. Just 47. There's no reason to think that the online subscribers are anything other than print subscribers who don't like to recycle--in other words, the WSJ target market which, in WSJ's own words, is "the nation's top business and political leaders, as well as investors across the country.". If the majority of WSJ subscriptions aren't written off as a business expense, the Journal itself would be flabbergasted--and worried. Paid content is growing far more slowly than the optimists hoped. Jupiter Research came out with a report in early 2003 saying that paid content dollars spent had exploded to 1.6 billion, and that 2003 would see 2 billion, but in fact we didn't hit 2 billion until (2004), and much of that was generated by new users, not increased per capita spending. As for what we spend on: the new entry is personals/dating. But the other top 2 of three have held constant for years: business/financial and entertainment/lifestyle (spelled PORN) (cite). I don't know what delusion gripped the Times management. But the facts on paid content have been uncompromisingly consistent for years.
The economics of publishing looked this way everywhere I worked: The biggest line it was production. The physical printing of the paper. From the cost of the paper and ink, to the guys who ran the press. And the cost of the press itself. SEcond was distribution. Paying people to actually get the paper to people. News was last. On the revenue side, subscriptions were a pain and added little to the bottom line, but were necessary in term sof ABC reports. The big money is advertising, and advertisers paid for eyeballs. So I've always wondered why you couldn't build an entirely new model of newspaper without the paper. It would seem doable, Eliminate production and distribution, put it all online. POdcast it too, so people can listen in the car. Or Satellite radio. My media column about this issue is up: Cal, thanks. I stand corrected. Posted by: Scott Butki at September 25, 2005 8:01 AM | Permalink The Business Week article I linked to in my post says: On the decade-old Web, "free" is the default setting, and it's difficult to make readers reboot. O.K., there's The Wall Street Journal (744,000 online paying customers and counting) and some targeted business sites. There are a few paid non-porn plays, like the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Packers Insider. But in August, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution doubled back on a year-old attempt to establish a paid sports Web site. In May, the Los Angeles Times made its calendarlive.com entertainment section free again, following a two-year bid to charge $4.95 for monthly access. "Brad DeLong is a liberal economist, but he doesn't have the platform that Krugman has." They just changed the platform Krugman has to something less powerful. "You can't best Dowd at what she does." What is it she does? "Anyway I don't see how you can compare a blog with a column, one is fast food, the other slow food, for the most part." First, you're not reading the right blogs. Second, you're not thinking about aggregation. Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 25, 2005 9:35 AM | Permalink Times Select has a free two week trial period, which may explain why The Times hasn't announced any numbers. Mickey Kaus might consider investigating what he's writing about. I've been reading blogs and online news only 6 months, and I admit, the Times bashing is very tiresome. Judith Miller, bad journalism, Judith Miller, Times Select, Judith Miller, bad journalism, Judith Miller. If you don't like it, why are you talking about it all the time? Posted by: ale at September 25, 2005 9:44 AM | Permalink Yes, there's a lot of gratuitous and childish Times-bashing online. At PressThink, I haven't written a post about the Times since May (" In Praise of Daniel Okrent.") You ignored my question, "ale"... what is it that Maureen Dowd does? Too tough for 'ya? I'd really like to know. In her latest we find such unduplicateable, high-valued-added observations as: Stormy is like his dad, Desert Stormy. They both love wardrobe calls: cool costumes, sports outfits, presidential windbreakers, "Top Gun" get-ups, weather gear. What is that? It that political analysis? Cultural synthesis? The application of expertise? Competition for Jon Stewart? The mobilization of outrage? S |
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