Slashdot Mirror
Times Paywall Blocks 90% of Traffic
Jamie was one of several readers to note the not particularly surprising results of the recent Times switch to a pay-wall. Apparently a 90% drop in readership is the reward. But then again, if they are paying real money, it might still be ok for them. It doesn't look very good though.
It seems to me like the Times would have been better off offering *premium* content to subscribers rather than closing off the entire site altogether."
I'm pretty sure that this is the model that the NYT abandoned 6 or 7 years ago as basically not worth the trouble. I guess they decided that advertising was worth more to them at the time. They've been talking about bringing back a paywall lately. I wonder how this result will impact that decision.
They might find more revenue with premium content only available thru subscriptions using dedicated, well designed iPhone/iPad apps.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
You can have the best reporters in the world, but if they're speaking to an empty room, they might as well not exist.
So, my understanding of this whole very interesting situation, is that journalism used to work by rewarding the journalists who went out and got a scoop, did investigative reporting or uncovered some huge scandal. That information was priceless and they would spend precious hours building up that report for an air date. Once their channel or printed paper ran that story, it would take a day or more for the rest to follow suit. Meanwhile you had a whole day of the public's attention on your channel/newspaper/magazine.
Enter the internet. For all intents and purposes of this discussion, she is the instantaneous transmission of such news stories. And duplication. How much time are you the center of attention when you break the story? A minute? Two minutes? You could have the best damned reporters in the world and some percentage of people will settle on reading a headline off of Slashdot or Google News that reads: "Murdoch Loses 90% of Readers with Times Paywall" instead of going to the source that called the Times and got that datum. And if I run a blog, all I need do is paraphrase everything in your article and suddenly I'm a contender for the endpoint of this information.
It seems to me like the Times would have been better off offering *premium* content to subscribers rather than closing off the entire site altogether.
What premium content do you have in mind? Do you think that doing even more exhaustive research on a story is going to change any of what I just explained? And what are you going to do when a blogger subscribes to your $5 per week premium content and then blogs about all of it at freetimes.blogspot.com? What then? Copyright lawsuits? Nobody cares. People say "offer premium content" with a wave of their hands. Well, what did you have in mind? I tried to discuss an alternative of this on Slashdot to no avail where basically there would be a pyramid of fractions of ad payments from those subscribed to your site cascading up to the original source.
My work here is dung.
....... login thinking that since I already payed for a sub on my Kindle that I might at least be given access to the website. To my horror I found out that they wanted me to pay a new sub :/
I tried to submit a question asking if I might get some money off the subscription as I already received The Times on my Kindle but guess what? The question submission form on their website doesn't work! Awesome \o/
I'll stick to the Guardian. I've also canceled my Kindle sub.
Yeah, except Slashdot works on a totally different economy of scale than a newsgathering organization.
How many traffic/camera helicopters does Slashdot have in the air? How many reporters do they hire in the Gulf of Mexico to cover the oil spill? None. They have volunteers submit "reprints" from other organizations who are themselves "reprinters" or in some cases the actual newsgathering organization. They have more volunteers who audit them, and more volunteers to run a vibrant discussion community.
The money gleaned from running Slashdot after paying for bandwidth and a little hookers and blow for the shareholders could never support even a handful of independent cub reporters, much less a decent newsgathering crew or a reprint subscription to Reuters.
Slashdot is actually a prime example of why the traditional print news media are having trouble. It costs a good deal of money to get good coverage of the news, and traditionally subscribers have paid for that. But now it's available everywhere, for free.
They'll dry up, and the only organizations left will be those that are big enough to use economies of scale in advertising to raise enough money. Which means the population of paid professional newsgatherers is going to plummet, replaced by reprints of the gist of Twitterstorms and the like.
May not be a complete disaster, but the Times (and the Gazette, and the Post) they are a'changin.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
The Times understand that they are undergoing an initial loss to set a new standard in online news. They hope that other news sites will follow suit. If and after they do, you will not be able to get the story on any other web site. Subsequently, subscribers should increase and revenue should increase.
So, it's not surprising that they're not making a profit on this switch, because frankly, they're probably not trying to.
Actually, the Times can make this a great success. They've just filtered out all the freeloaders and now have a nice exclusive club of readers willing to pay for something on the Internet. I would say that's far, far more valuable than all the riff-raff that want something for free. They'll be charging top-dollar for advertising/features now, and not have any problems filling those side columns.