Slashdot Mirror
Paywalled NYT Now Has 300,000 Online Subscribers
An anonymous reader writes "It looks like the derided-on-slashdot paywall for the NY Times hasn't brought down the paper so far. The Times now reports 300,000 digital subscribers (to e-reader versions and the web combined) and digital advertising revenue for the part of the company that includes the paper has increased 6% this quarter."
This just in: Slashdot is often wrong about things like this. The same way neither the iPhone or iPad failed.
Yet another story that shows that a /. reader/commenter does not represent the typical customer of a major news outlet.
Care to back that up with some facts?
Aside the few clowns on /. it is a highly literate audience - which is what the NYT caters to.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Keep in mind that every print subscriber gets a free top-of-the-line digital subscription. Its actually cheaper to get the paper edition and recycle it then it is to just get the online, in fact, which is annoyingly stupid.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Highly literate audience with disposable income for things like ipads/nooks/whatever.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
Compared to even obscure little slashdot.
Honestly, they should be over 1,000,000 already if they were to be as successful as they claimed to be. and how much you want to bet they are counting the paper subscribers that logged in to set up their online account, so the real number is far lower.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Anywho, I can access NYT articles with no problem from both work and home. Am I missing something here?
Is 300k subscribers good? What percentage of total online readers is that? Also, sure, a 6% increase in digital advertising revenue is good, in that any increase is good. But what sort of increase did comparable websites see?
must be in a cookie somewhere
Double counting anyone?
Probably.
As rjstanford pointed out:
Keep in mind that every print subscriber gets a free top-of-the-line digital subscription. Its actually cheaper to get the paper edition and recycle it then it is to just get the online, in fact, which is annoyingly stupid.
So yeah - every paper subscriber is a digital subscriber, even if they:
Haven't actually set up an account.
Don't care.
Don't know.
They also get access to all the various "app" versions of their shit AND they have the ability to share access to a friend/family member.
Kindle owners?
The 300000 quoted are just the people with only a digital subscription. So no they aren't double counting.
I'm glad to see the NY Times is able to make some good revenue off their site, but this probably only works for the larger papers.
Large influential papers like the NY Times and Wall St. Journal have a certain level of clout and original content that people are willing to pay for. It's highly unlikely that your local newspaper is going to make any reasonable amount of money off of creating a paywall. Most local papers feature largely wire stories you can find online from thousands of other papers. More circumstantial -- but it's also been my observation that the "younger generations" increasingly don't care about local interest stories or Prep Sports that may be in the local papers -- which is usually the only original content they offer.
So in the long run, I can see this saving a handful of the largest national papers, but I feel most local papers will be in even more trouble in the future.
LOL. All you have to do to get around the pay wall is to delete the cookie they send over or just block it using no-script. Works like a charm every time. I will not pay for something they make obviously simple to get around.
Not at all. It is maybe center or center right. Only compared to Fox news and other so far right they might as well be fascist news outlets is NYT lefty. If you want to see an actual leftist/lefty newspaper check out http://socialistworker.org/.
How many of those did they give away?
I remember when the paywall thing started they were giving tons of those away.
If the digital version includes ads I will never buy it.
I will say, having the International Herald on mine is freakin' handy.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I wonder how effective these paywalls would be if more people realized you can simply clear your cookies to bypass it.
Reality has a well known left-bias.
Indeed. That's why communism was such a success.
It isn't a paywall, it is a payrope. You can just wander right over it (without any underhand tactics). I have been a reader before and after (5-10 articles per day) and have not noticed any difference. I don't know what the article cut-off is, but unless you plan to read the thing cover-to-cover every day you aren't going to notice. I suspect a lot of the 300k subscriptions come from ipads and kindles, because I can't see how it would be easy to get value for money from a PC subscription.
/. crowd say will fail). The NYT payrope is a sensible hybrid model, that finds enough people (willing or stupid depending on your prerogative) to pay, while the rest go free. Now if we get figures on The Times of London's subscriber figures (blanket solid paywall) then I suspect they would be a lot more in-keeping with the /. predictions.
Paywalls block all content, and are flawed (and are what the
No, just stuff that has ads. Either you get me to watch advertising or I will pay. You can't have both.
I pay for netflix, which has no ads. I use only the free Hulu since it has ads.
I was surprised to find out that they still show advertising to paid subscribers, in particular annoying Flash based advertising.
Luckily there is Adblock.
I dream of a nation where a man is not judged by his skin color but by an number assigned by a credit rating agency.
I have struggled mightily to resist paying the high rate and absurd model (pay more for access on the ipad? Seriously?) that the Times charges. I've tried to find other news sources that compare in depth, editorial insight, and quality independent reporting. Everything I've used to date has been half as good at best. I haven't caved yet, but I can see it coming on the horizon...
I got it for free on my ipad
Funny how the extremes of Left and Right both end up in exactly the same place: Totalitarianism. Maybe Left and Right aren't very accurate labels.
brandelf -t FreeBSD
There is more to it than just left and right. There are other interpretations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pournelle_chart
How does it feel to be a liar with pants constantly on fire?
Why do you want something that, by it's very nature, is substantial out f date by the time you get to it?
Which is fine, I'm just curious.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Real news coverage is about depth much more than timeliness. I'd much rather have in-depth analysis of say, a proposed law, in a week or two than fluff in 6 hours.
TODO: Something witty here...
Nobody on slashdot would care about stupid paywall sites if you would do the most basic of editing tasks and stop linking to them.
Good point, and I suspect most /. readers further realize that you can bypass the paywall by entering the site via google, including via rss feeds of stories in google reader.
I got it for free on my ipad
No, you didn't. It was paid for by the outrageous markup you turned your head and coughed up for having PHB decide what you can and cannot run on hardware for which you were way overcharged.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
The article says they don't included the 100,000 Ford Motor gave away for free. Nor does that number included the 800,00 paper delivery people that got it for free. Considering that they about 35 million homes get paper deliver, that means over 34 million people get the paper delivery and REFUSED the electronic one.
OK, so 900,000 people got it for free and 324,000 people to actually buy? Out of a potential market of 35 million people? If you give away 9 to get 3 people out of every 350 to buy your product, it is a failure.
The real problem is they don't know what a success is.
I would really like to know how many of their 324,000 paid electronic subscribers are actual individuals living in America, as opposed to libraries, colleges, and people living outside of the US.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
If the digital version includes ads I will never buy it.
And I'm sure the people at the ny times can't sleep at night knowing this.
I got it for free on my ipad
No, you didn't. It was paid for by the outrageous markup you turned your head and coughed up for having PHB decide what you can and cannot run on hardware for which you were way overcharged.
Why all the hate?
Write boring code, not shiny code!
You might notice that the truth of that statement does not dispute the argument that the number of subscribers is inflated by those who were not given the choice of declining the subscription in exchange for a price reduction on the iPad.
Really? Next I suppose you'll tell me Fascism is also some form of Leftism plot and the entire right-wing Christian coalition bringing it along were actually disguised liberals there to give the extreme conservatives a bad name. Let's be morally serious here and objectively assess the evidence. I would hope Coulter/McCarthy-like liberal paranoia could be reserved for a less educated audience where it can prey on ignorance and illusory superiority to gain popularity.
brandelf -t FreeBSD
Incognito mode FTW.
Why do you want something that, by it's very nature, is substantial out f date by the time you get to it?
Hey, you have your reasons for reading Slashdot, and I have mine!
I find myself much more likely to take a look at international news when it's "physically" available to me. I don't seem to do so when I'm sitting at a computer, even though I could do so more easily, for free, and in a more timely manner.
Not sure why.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
They are no doubt bolstering that number with a limited time promotion.
For years I accessed their content on the iPhone and web. Their content is first class but then they demanded $45/month for all devices (including iPad). I found other avenues - no big deal. I did miss it on the iApple devices but nothing earth shattering.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, they advertised $0.99 for full access for two months. Not bad, I think their content is good enough I would pay something for it, but as the old joke goes: we're just negotiating the price. This has the side effect (they they're counting on) of inflating their numbers to no doubt set their advertising rate.
When the special is gone, so am I.
When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras
...are idiots.
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
Just use Safari's "Reader" function. It extracts the actual article from behind the paywall overlay and makes it easily readable. I don't know how long they'll leave that vulnerability there though, so enjoy it while it lasts.
He needs some way to explain why people are buying a product he doesn't like.
Might want to check yourself in the mirror -- your bias is showing.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
China called, they want their money.
Then you want to read The Economist. Look around for a few minutes and be impressed that such a high-level newspaper exists. Despite its name, it does not deal with mostly economics. It's more for international politics and major world events.
It's interesting to read magazines like The Economist six months or so after they're published. You quickly get a feel for what's worth getting curious, outraged, or excited about, and what's not. Anything that's still important and relevant after six months is worth further consideration.
Obviously that approach doesn't scale all the way down to local news media, unless you want to wake up to the sound of bulldozers in your front yard. But on a national/international level, it saves a lot of time and angst.
He probably can't afford an iPad... Fox and the sour grapes and all that...
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
I figured it would go like this, but I had a serious problem with the timing of everything. They opened this paywall in the same month that two of their best and most vituperative anti-establishmentarian writers -- Frank Rich and Bob Herbert -- "left" the NYT. It was a very strange coincidence, as if perfectly timed to bring the corporate and well-heeled safely over without fear of seeing their agenda keelhauled several times a week. All that remains is the Nobel winner Krugman, who is as bulletproof as it gets in that kind of culture.
Development is programmable; Discovery is not programmable. (Fuller)
300k people don't know how to delete cookies.
to cover the 1%, doesn't it?
Below are some other recommended magazines for depth. These are worth supporting much more than your average newspaper.
The New Yorker
The Atlantic
Harper's
Lapham's Quarterly (not news coverage, exactly, but still great)
(Canadian) The Walrus
(Australian) The Monthly
(Australian) Quarterly Essay
(UK) Standpoint
(UK) Prospect
(India) The Caravan
(Spain) Catalan International View
Have any relevant information at all that the free NYT app and the price of the ipad have any connection whatsoever?
I'm glad they have enough paying subscribers because I like reading the NYT .
To avoid the article quota of 20, 1] sign up for their daily email and link to articles from it for no count and 2] use google news links with no count
I don't see how that changes it either. The question is not whether the price of the iPad would have been less without the subscription. The question is whether the iPad users would have bought the subscription if it had an additional cost, as distinguished from buying an iPad and receiving a subscription they would not otherwise have paid for.
Put it a different way: If every iPad user gets a "paid" subscription but without paying additional money, you aren't measuring the number of paid subscriptions, you're measuring the number of iPads.
If they were way overcharged, why are all the Android pads about the same price?
Learn to love Alaska