Comments on: How the NYT paywall is working

By: whyUnique

whyUnique — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 19:32:18 +0000

Wonder if NYT considered the NPR model of voluntary subscription?

By: fxtrader14

fxtrader14 — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 11:34:46 +0000

“the WSJ and FT are still treating their readers with mistrust, as though they’ll be robbed somehow if they ever let their guard down a little.”
Given the WSJ and FT’s customers are mostly bankers/finance-type and the recent experience of regulators, politicians, customers “letting their guards down” to bankers, it seems to me perfectly sound of the FT/WSJ to not trust its customers…

By: newsjunkie247

newsjunkie247 — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 00:19:53 +0000

I think you are making a false assumption though. You are assuming that a majority of those 200 000 plus users are paying out of choice and that they see the choices that they have. But I think the first comment on this post illustrates the opposite. It isn’t necessarily the fact that people are considering both options realistically and choosing to pay. We don’t know who makes up those 200 000 people. Techsavviness and psychology play a really big role here. If a majority of those paying are somewhat older and less techsavvy, they might think the paywall is harsher than it is and harder to get around. When I shared this video on Facebook showing the workaround (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5R4CgDw FX), several otherwise intelligent college grads were very thankful and had not realized how easy it was, just like the commenter above and simply believed that because the marketing painted the idea of a paywall, that one really existed. The NYT doesn’t market this as a low paywall. They emphasize that one still get in through links on blogs/social media, but believe it or not, most people don’t realize that one can also in matter of seconds create such a link in their address bar. If hypothetically, the Times created such a video as posted above, this would be a very different story. There was a really great comment in the German Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung that unfortunately has been translated. But it had this key sentence. “The only people who pay are the ones who are too dumb, too lazy or too nice, or those who want to read the paper on an iThingy”. And these are the people the advertisers want to reach? How about the young techsavvy people who aren’t repelled from reading the Times by a non-existing paywall? http://www.faz.net/artikel/C31013/zeitun g-im-internet-die-dummen-die-faulen-und- die-netten-30480810.html

By: hbobrien

hbobrien — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 21:30:22 +0000

“(The NYT is) a publicly-listed for-profit corporation, run for the financial benefit of its shareholders.”

Ah, urban legend strikes again. To quote from “Why We Should Stop Teaching Dodge v. Ford,” by Lynn A. Stout, in the Spring 2008 issue of the Virginia Business & Law Review:

“Dodge v. Ford is indeed bad law, at least when cited for the proposition that the corporate purpose is, or should be, maximizing shareholder wealth. Dodge v. Ford is a mistake, a judicial “sport,” a doctrinal oddity largely irrelevant to corporate law and corporate practice. What is more, courts and legislatures alike treat it as irrelevant. In the past thirty years, the Delaware courts have cited Dodge v. Ford as authority in only one unpublished case, and then not on the subject of corporate purpose, but on another legal question entirely.

Only laypersons and (more disturbingly) many law professors continue to rely on Dodge v. Ford. This Essay argues we should mend our collective ways. Legal instructors and scholars should stop teaching and citing Dodge v. Ford. At the least, they should stop teaching and citing Dodge v. Ford as anything more than an example of how courts can go seriously astray.”

Further down in the article we find:

“What about state corporation codes? Do they perhaps limit the corporate purpose to shareholder wealth maximization? To employ the common saying, the answer is “not just ‘no,’ but ‘hell no.’” A large majority of state codes contain so-called other-constituency provisions that explicitly authorize corporate boards to consider the interests of not just shareholders, but also employees, customers, creditors, and the community, in making business decisions. The Delaware corporate code does not have an explicit other-constituency provision, but it also does not define the corporate purpose as shareholder wealth maximization. Rather, section 101 of the General Corporation Law of Delaware simply provides that corporations can be formed “to conduct or promote any lawful business or purposes.””

So the NYT *might* be run for the financial benefit of its shareholders… but there’s no necessity for it.

By: SSDependent

SSDependent — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 07:44:42 +0000

Well, Felix, I’m certainly glad to see that your readers, most of them apparently, are gainfully and happily employed, but I would remind those of you who are so snugly living in your privileged and rarefied worlds that outside that bubble there is a recession going on–and, indeed, if we are to believe people like Floyd Norris and Paul Krugman, may very well be rapidly closing in on RECESSION REDUX–and that some of us who find ourselves consigned to living in the lower rungs and have as a result not held a job, literally for years, find even $5.00 a month, let alone $15.00, a not exactly inconsiderable sum to be tossing out to the venerable Grey Lady for the honor of staying informed. I know, I know, I realize that there are some who find that hard to believe and think nothing of sneering at those forced to work around that blasted paywall, but I can assure you, sad to say, that it’s all too true. Please read the national and financial sections of that paper a bit more conscientiously and try not to be as smug as those appalling Republican clowns we see every night on tv who seem hell-bent on making our lives a living nightmare.

By: David239

David239 — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 06:21:26 +0000

Were I back in Boston, I’d subscribe to the print edition, but here in Tokyo, paying more and getting less grates. But there’s not much other than Krugman there any more (see above on Brooks, Fish, et. al.) and Krugman’s not behind the paywall, if I understand correctly. (And you can just read the other econ blogs to see what Krugman’s up to.)

So the bottom line here is that the NYT isn’t providing enough content to justify the bother of signing up and making sure they can deal with a non-US account.

By: david3

david3 — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 23:24:15 +0000

Spot on Felix. I never went to the IMA until it was free. After going once, free, I realized what a great treasure it was and have since contributed.

By: jomiku

jomiku — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 14:04:22 +0000

The paywall encouraged me to subscribe to the Sunday paper. That’s the driver: they generate additional paper subscriptions, generate cash from digital subscribers, generate eyeballs at the website and then they sell ads in both paper and digital. They price the Sunday paper subscription – at least in the East – so it’s the most attractive option, which makes a ton of financial sense because that is the big money maker for ads. If they can sell more newsprint with those ads, still generate eyeballs for digital ads, drive people to the highest profit editions, etc. then they are doing well.

By: albertsun

albertsun — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 04:20:23 +0000

The WSJ paywall is only marginally harder to get by and most people I talk to realize that just as well. Just Google the headline and click the link. Plus a lot of the content (half perhaps?) is free to everybody without even having to google or tweak the url or anything.

Disclaimer: I work for the WSJ.

By: dannysullivan

dannysullivan — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 00:51:56 +0000

I think it would be really helpful to understand how much of this is driven by people who simply want access through apps.

It seems the apps are actually the real wall If you want access through an app, there’s no easy way around that.

Yep, you can fire up your web browser, but apps make it easy to have the whole package.

My guess — which is purely a guess — is that many of the new subscriptions aren’t from people who hit the on-site paywall (and I’d really love if you dug, so we could know) but rather people who wanted the app access.

Consider also that $193 for M-F print access gave you ALL digital access, whereas buying just smartphone/web app access on its own (not tablet) was $2 more.

Basically, they’ve tossed in the print paper for free. That’s an attraction right there (even if I, having taken this deal, only flip through it maybe twice per week).

I’m sure some people have hit the completely porous 20 per month view limit that’s easily gone around, if you know how. But many of the non-tech savvy don’t and think uh oh, I’d better pay. Many of even the tech savvy might think, too much hassle (this is why I have a WSJ subscription, among other reasons). Time is money; it’s not that much money for some regular readers on the web not to have paywall hassle.

But I’d really, really like to see those breakdowns. My guess is that this the apps that are making the paywall work better than in the past.

By: KenG_CA

KenG_CA — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 23:09:26 +0000

@etani, I don’t know if you have read the FT lately, but it is anything but conservative, especially for what passes as conservative these days. Nixon used to be called conservative, and he would be crucified by the right as a socialist, as he was to the left of Obama. Even Reagan would be called liberal by today’s conservatives, for he signed off on many tax increases.

By: KenG_CA

KenG_CA — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 22:24:30 +0000

Curmudgeon, I agree with you, but then again, we come from a different world than the NYT. They want $3.70 per week for M-F delivery and unlimited web access, and all digital access package. the digital package is $3.75/wk. Since I have to sign in to get digital access with the print subscription, they will get all that information you mentioned, but why would they want to incur the expense of a print version when I don’t want it is beyond me.

I’m not convinced the Times is the culprit, I think it’s advertisers who will pay more for print ads than temporary web ads. I have never thought advertisers were all that smart, and this renforces that belief.

By: seanmatthews

seanmatthews — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 21:24:15 +0000

The paywall at the NYT is so permeable that it is an obvious deliberate decision; it took me about 5 minutes from cold to figure out how to get around it. Same at the Economist. Simply open a private browsing window in Explorer (not sure if it works with other browsers, the privacy model for Explorer seems stronger than for Safari, for instance). I think the difference between the Economist and the FT is interesting, since they both belong to Pearson – but the Economist has the more savy marketing people.

Problem with the NYT and me is that I only read Krugman and the book and movie reviews for the most part. I certainly don’t read David Brooks or Thomas Friedman or Freakanomics or Stanley Fish or (actually that isn’t quite true, I did read Stanley Fish recently, to check that he really is like I remember). I might pay for them all to go away.

By: etarini

etarini — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 20:25:25 +0000

Interesting. Maybe it’s a function of the corporate worldview, informed by personal worldviews. NYT=liberal, trusting. WSJ and FT=conservative, distrusting.

By: Kachingler1

Kachingler1 — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 20:19:08 +0000

So it’s a donation system!

If that’s true then might there be a better architected system that:

1) doesn’t cost $40M to build so that the rest of the internet producers could also participate

2) is networked — e.g. works across all websites, blogs, UGC channels such as on YouTube

3) gives the contributor a visible pat on the back for making a donation

4) is inexpensive enough that at least half of the world’s 7B people could participate

5) is trivial, or even no work at all, to implement and costs nothing for the producers