Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Times Paywall Blocks 90% of Traffic

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the that-wouldn't-go-over-well-here dept.

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.

30 of 311 comments (clear)

  1. The real question by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The real question is how many of those remaining users are actual *new* subscribers and not just those who had already had print subscriptions even before the change. I suspect that number would make these stats even more dismal.

    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. At a certain point, if you're not out there in the digital world, you risk utter irrelevance. You can have the best reporters in the world, but if they're speaking to an empty room, they might as well not exist.

    Add to this the fact that they supposedly won't even allow their subscribers to cut/copy from stories or do searches, and it seems like a program almost designed to intentionally drive away interest. Even the subscribers are treated with open hostility.

    Maybe Murdoch is adopting the Cartmanland business plan (i.e., if you tell people they can't come, they'll line up in droves). But I don't think it works that way in real life.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re:The real question by Tangential · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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
    2. Re:The real question by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.
    3. Re:The real question by NotQuiteReal · · Score: 3, Funny

      Here, let me edit your words a bit;

      Maybe Murdoch... would ... like the Times ... to ... not exist.

      --
      This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
    4. Re:The real question by elrous0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well, /. itself is a pretty good example of how this can work. The basics are available for free, but subscribers get nice perks. I'm more than happy to pay extra for those perks. But I never would have even considered subscribing if, on my first visit to the site, I had been greeted with a big wall that said "You can't see ANYTHING here until you pay us."

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    5. Re:The real question by natehoy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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."
    6. Re:The real question by sorak · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That may work for /., and I'm not saying the paid wall will work for anybody else, but the problem is that /. has a much lower overhead than traditional media, because they do not pay reporters to do investigative journalism. If every story linked on the site had to be written by a slashdot employee, then their accounting would look a little different. Then there's the fact that, when people think about news media, they seem to think only of the major players in large markets. Small towns, consisting of 100,000 people or less need news as well, but it is nearly impossible to support local reporters, editors, and managers when you're getting paid 2 dollars for every 1,000 banners delivered.

      If we assumed 50,000 hits per day, that's $100 per day for every banner shown on a typical page. If we assumed three reporters and an editor, getting paid $30,000 per year, one IT guy and a manger, getting paid $40,000 per year, then the website would have to display six banners per page, and maintain a paper interesting enough to keep the 50,000 impressions per day they're currently getting. ($200,000 in salary, divided by 365 is $547 per day). This isn't taking into account other expenses, like paying rent, benefits,taxes, hardware costs, or anything else. The point is that the banner-driven business model is not going to work for small papers, unless some significant changes take place.

      And that is why newspapers want to kill the internet and go back to the 80's/early 90's.

      I don't know what the answer is, and I don't think paid walls are the answer either, but local newspapers will have to do something differently if they wish to survive. The problem is that the only people willing to pay for content are advertisers, and what that's just a pittance.

    7. Re:The real question by rickb928 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is an 'old' truth. What's the most perishable product the local supermarket sells?

      Eggs? Nope.

      Lettuce? Nu uh.

      Milk? not even close.

      Newspapers. They are delivered fresh every morning, and no matter how you store them, they are pretty much useless and unwanted by noon. Afternoon papers. were so perishable they woudl be delivered around 4pm and didn't even get past the dinner hour and useless. By 8pm no one wanted one. The stores made the publishers take them back the next day.

      Unless you were moving and needed dishwrap, in which case you could usually buy the Sunday paper for half-price. Cheaper than actual wrapping paper.

      They call it fish-wrap for a reason.

      So the NYT is finding out not much has changed. The Internet has compressed the news cycle from about 4 hours (breakfast, paper, work, coffee pot, water cooler, lunch, on to the next story) to about 15 minutes (breakfast, email, Google, forwards to friends, blog, done). What we get now is the repetition of the current 's t o r y', and then on to the next one.

      I recall knowing a lot of people in local television in the 80s. I spotted a reporterette out with her cameraman onw day downtown, and mentioned that I saw a competing station's crew down the street about 10 minutes ago. She panicked - "OH MY GOD, what did we miss?" Turns out a jewelry shop owner was running for mayor. She already did that story at city hall. But it was competitive. Guess where? The smallest market in the U.S. that had all 4 networks at the time. News has always been competitive. Now it's also more open. The big guys don't have the advantages. You don't need to buy ink by the barrel any more, just by the megabyte.

      --
      deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
    8. Re:The real question by delinear · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Exactly, and if readers are going so far as to block ads, I would suggest looking at the reasons why they're blocking ads. It's generally not because they begrudge the site owner earning money, it's more often that the ads are damn annoying and a major distraction to the content. If you can make the ads less distracting, load in a timely fashion and not weigh in at several meg, you may find that's a more sustainable business model on the web than just sticking up a toll booth.

    9. Re:The real question by pmonje · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Actually in this instance, that's not how the business transaction works. That $1.50 you pay for the paper version barely pays for distribution. Newspapers get their profit from advertising. The main problem is that internet advertising sucks. The profit is from click-thrus, not page views, but no one clicks, your eyes basically ignore the ads and you move on to the actual text. Even without an ad-blocker people know to skip the top of the page to avoid banners and stay away from the margins. That's because they are flashy and filled with crap. They contain nothing useful for the reader. Newspaper ads are different, they have more connection to you and even contain useful information. That 1/2 page ad for a local car dealer gives you a general idea of local car prices, same for the real estate ads. The supermarket ad tells you what's on sale this week and gives you coupons. Even ads for local businesses that you will never use promote name recognition and form a sort of local directory in your head keeping you current on your community. The ads in newspapers are relevant to you, they actually form a part of the content of a newspaper. Internet ads have never done that. Google tried with adsense, but it never really works unless you're a lonely man with a small penis and erectile disfunction.

    10. Re:The real question by kg8484 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If you can make the ads less distracting, load in a timely fashion and not weigh in at several meg, you may find that's a more sustainable business model on the web than just sticking up a toll booth.

      Speaking as someone with an adblocker, I have to say that this still will not work. Why? Because other people will use the annoying ads because they pay more money. So people like me will just install an adblocker and not touch the settings.

      Say I am new to the internet. I visit Anne's site which has a lot of ads that annoy me. I ask my friend Bob how I can get around this and he sets me up with an adblocker. I'm not going to even know how to whitelist certain pages. In fact, "whitelist" would sound like something the Black Panthers carry around, and I don't want any part of that. So now when I visit Carmen's site which contains unobtrusive banner ads, she still doesn't get paid for the impression.

      This is a modern example of the tragedy of the commons. Viewers are grass in the pasture, and each web site operator is a herder, and the cows are the types of ads they have on their web site. Many will try to get more and bigger cows (more ads and more annoying ads), until it is no longer sustainable and the pasture dies (people no longer view ads because everyone has an ad blocker). At this point, even the responsible cattlemen suffer too. This is an oversimplification, but I hope it illustrates my point.

    11. Re:The real question by harl · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I don't have a problem with ads. I have a problem with scripts. So I run a script blocker.

      It just happens to have the the side effect of blocking many ads.

      --
      I find being offended by me offensive.
    12. Re:The real question by kyrio · · Score: 3, Informative

      I get so many mod points I don't know what to do with them. I am always logged in and I visit a couple of times a day. I meta-mod when I remember to do so.

  2. 10% remains? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If 10% of the traffic remains even with the paywall, that's phenomenal success. On the other hand, most statistics are made up on the spot. 90% of all people know that.

  3. The risk with paying for news... by Drakkenmensch · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... is that people will just say "screw that!" and go to another website where they can get it for free. World events aren't copyrighted to any one provider (for now, anyway...)

  4. BANG, BANG, both feet. by Rogerborg · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Because if you're a publicist, why would you offer The Times content in return for publicity that nobody will see? If you're a columnist, how does it help your career to write articles that nobody reads, or can link to?

    By reducing the number of readers, they're not just cutting off advertising revenue, they're also making it more expensive to obtain content.

    --
    If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
  5. It's like parking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If every single store in your city offers free parking, and you decide to charge for it, and you find you still have 1 in 10 customers willing to shop there, are you doing well when you're too lazy to check the parking lot for cars?

    Once the Times does that, they'll find that 10% is mooching parking from elsewhere or taking the bus. And, no surprise, the other store owners are even more solidified that they keep their free parking (by towing away your customers).

    Now you could get away with charging for parking if everyone else is doing it, but lets face it, we're not running out of internet, so that won't happen.

  6. Declining fast, apparently... by Nick+Fel · · Score: 3, Informative

    Because two days earlier, the very same newspaper reported they'd only lost 66% of their readership.

  7. Broken record by sircastor · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yup: Paywall bad idea. They will reap the consequences, blah blah blah.

    The hardest thing they're going to have to learn to grasp in new media economics is that it's not just their business model that's changing. It's not just that they're going to have to stop expecting people to pay for their services like they did before. Their entire industry is going through a massive shift. Personally, the only way I see newspapers surviving is that they become tremendously small outfits. 10-man operations that produce solely for the web and offer a print-on-demand version for those who are interested. Your staff of a dozen reporters and the hundred people who support them aren't going to last here. Print journalism as an industry just can't support those people the way it used to.

    Is journalism dead? No. But I think massive news companies are. Journalists and the "Ace Reporter" are going to become free agents. Newspapers are going to become aggregators of the information they collect, and they'll likely have to secure a story with a fee or a retainer. I have sympathy for the people whose jobs are disappearing, but I think every time a job disappears, a new industry grows and more jobs are created.

    In a semi-related note, I think that DC should do a Superman storyline where Clark gets laid-off because the Planet can't support his job anymore.

  8. Sometimes some are too early (premium content) by beh · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Berner Zeitung (one of the two main papers in the Swiss capital) used this approach about 10 or so years ago, but (unfortunately, I thought) shut it down after a bit over a year.

    What they did was to allow anyone free access to the full articles of the current day, but at the same time offer an online subscription for (IIRC) ~USD 40,-/yr. The online subscriber got some extra benefits in being able to access all full articles - not just the current day; and were able to download pdf page views of the actual papers as well, and give a search functionality for their news archive.

    Overall at the time, I really liked the offering, and was saddened when they shut it down (not profitable)... I just think, they had been too early trying it. I think it could be a decent model for a lot of papers today...

  9. Re:Paywall by smallfries · · Score: 4, Informative

    Err.... WTF?

    What kind of crack are you smoking? This story is not about the NYT, and the NYT does not have a paywall (registration is free). Did you think that you could make some kind of point by cobbling together words that you felt were related to the story?

    --
    Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
  10. the newspapers screwed up their business models by alen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    used to be that they owned the classifieds. if you wanted to sell something you would advertise in a newspaper. then ebay, google, craigslist and others took the market and the newspapers didn't do anything about it. i know someone who advertised a condo for sale in the NY Times last year and i thought it was a joke and a waste of money. so 1990's. these days you do craiglist and sell it yourself or go to a realtor. even the realtors don't advertise anything in the newspapers. the same ad every weekend just to get customers in. the lead time is so long that it's a waste of time trying to advertise new properties in the newspaper.

    if the newspapers want revenue they need to start an open source type for sale/job listing site and share the revenue. but it's too late

  11. I tried to..... by moodel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ....... 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.

  12. These aren't reliable numbers by jfoobaz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is based on an estimate by the Guardian, without any data provided by the Times to back it up. It could well be true, but it's basically wild speculation without actual numbers to back it up.

  13. Re:Paywall by jmichaelg · · Score: 3, Informative

    He's smoking some ambiguity crack. That's the kind that lets you make a joke based on an ambiguity that leaves open an alternative interpretation to a discussion. For example...

  14. Slashdot readers are missing the point! by dawilcox · · Score: 5, Interesting
    This comment (and most comments posted here) seem to fail to address the real purpose of the Times.

    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.

  15. Clearing out the riff-raff by smeette · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  16. Free online NYT access led me to subscribe by Faizdog · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm probably a minority dwarfed by free-loading readers, but free online NYT access led me to buy a full 7-day a week subscription to the paper.

    I used to (and still do) go to Google News for my daily news digest (one of many sources I'd visit). Over time, I noticed that many of the stories I was interested were from either the NY Times or the LA Times. Furthermore, I noticed that for stories I'd read on many sites linked to from Google News, the NY Times (and LA Times) versions were regularly better written and more informative in my opinion.

    Due to this (and the fact that I live in the suburbs of NYC) I started to regularly read the full paper online on the NYT website. After a few months of this, I decided that I found this quality reporting valuable, and worth supporting. Furthermore, I relocated a little further away from the city and was now commuting by train instead of by car. So I then decided to by a subscription. Now I have the paper delivered every day, and they have me as a full, loyal subscriber. All because of the free online access they provided.

    But for everyone of me, there are probably a lot of free-loaders.

    --
    -"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
  17. And along those lines by fyngyrz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One of the things that make me surf away, and stay away, are pop-ups that instantiate when my mouse simply goes over something; if I'm not clicking on it, I don't WANT it. That's the worst mistake a web designer can make, in my estimation. Even worse than annoying ads. Rollovers aren't just a "distraction", they're direct interference with what I'm trying to do -- they cover text and images with no warning and no desire whatsoever on my part to see the popup material.

    The same goes for menus - if I don't click on it, I didn't ASK for it. There are many reasons my mouse may go from hither to yon on a web page, and the ONLY way you know I wanted something it went over is to receive a legitimate click.

    It's far too annoying to treat a web page as a maze of locations you can't let your mouse go through without being abused by a pop-up; once that crap starts, I'm right out of there, and I mean right now.

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    1. Re:And along those lines by tnk1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well you have a good point. No one is asking for ads. However, people *do* want to know about products that they are interested in. I will certainly look at and be interested in an ad for a product that is topical to the site I am looking at. They do serve a purpose, if they can be help factual, interesting and not overwhelming.

      The major problem is not ads, it is the arms race that the advertisers are in to get bigger, more noticeable and more annoying ads on your screen. At this point, ads are extremely obnoxious. In-network ads with jittery animations of images that have nothing to do with their product, and the gigantic, sea-sickness inducing banner ads that are now invading sites like CNN.com where the whole *page* is shifted downward at page load time and then the whole page is shifted back up when it is done. These are the sorts of things that give ads on web pages a really bad name.

      There really is, perhaps not a need, but certainly a good argument for advertisement. The problem is that the advertisements as they are now are trying to overshadow the actual content and that is incredibly annoying, distracting and counterproductive. If the NYT and other content providers had some guts and some intelligence, they would crack down on what advertisers are putting on their pages.

      In the end, I think it would even help advertisers if they didn't have to be in the "bigger, more annoying ad" race. The advertisers, even though they pay for the sites, are becoming parasites on those sites: the content is used to generate page views so that they can cram the page with ads, and then those ads eventually kill the content site because of the annoying ads or the fact that the users now use ad-blockers. When the blockers go up, the site dies as advertisers leave, but the ad-blockers also start forcing the advertisers themselves into an arms race with the ad-blockers who are ultimately the users themselves.