Murdoch's UK Paywall a Miserable Failure

David Gerard writes "As part of his war against free, Rupert Murdoch put the Times and Sunday Times of London behind a paywall. Michael Wolff of Newser asks how that's working out for him. You can guess: miserable failure: 'Not only is nobody subscribing to the website, but subscribers to the paper itself — who have free access to the site — are not going beyond the registration page. It's an empty world.' Not that this wasn't entirely predictable." Update: 07/17 01:41 GMT by T : Frequent contributor Peter Wayner writes skeptically that the Newsday numbers should be looked at with a grain of salt: "I believe they were charging $30/month for the electronic edition and $25/month for the dead tree edition which also offered free access to the electronic edition. In essence, you had to pay an extra $5 to avoid getting your lawn littered with paper. The dead tree edition gets much better ad rates and so it is worth pushing. It's a mistake to see the raw numbers and assume that the paywall failed."

Comments

Re:LOL!

[JustinRLynn]

[Nelson Muntz]

Re:You Can't Cite Wolff on Anything Murdoch!!

[Eunuchswear]

Nobody who knows anything about Murdoch or NYC journalism takes anything Wolff has to say seriously when he's in "Murdoch mode." Kind of like asking the Sheriff of Nottingham to give a measured opinion about that guy "Robin Hood."

You compared Rupert Murdoch to Robin Hood?

Wow.