March 17, 2011
New York Times launches paywall—and why most news orgs shouldn’t
Today the New York Times announced that it’s finally implementing its long-awaited paywall. Here’s why the plan might work, at least somewhat, for the Times—and why the vast majority of other newspapers should not try this approach…
The Times calls its plan “digital subscriptions”—but what it means is that the paper is instituting a paywall to curtail (but not completely cut off) free online access to its content.
The basics:
Direct visitors to NYTimes.com have a limit of 20 free stories per month. Registered users can check how many Times stories they’ve read in the last month in the what you’ve read column on the recommendations page.
After the 20-page limit, you have to sign up for a digital subscription. Three plans are offered, starting at $15/month.
Home delivery subscribers get full, unlimited access to the site—but you have to sign up online for it.
There’s a pretty big loophole on the monthly story limit that may keep this paywall from decimating the Times’ strong search visibility and sharing popularity, which the paper has worked hard to cultivate. Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. explained:
“Readers who come to Times articles through links from search, blogs and social media like Facebook and Twitter will be able to read those articles, even if they have reached their monthly reading limit. For some search engines, users will have a daily limit of free links to Times articles.”
UPDATE MARCH 18: Business Insider reports that there are already workarounds for this kind of paywall, and explains how to use them. And The Atlantic covered a Twitter-based workaround, @freeNYT.
Some news will stay free for everyone: the home page, all section fronts, all blog fronts, and classifieds. And in the Times’ smartphone and tablet apps, the “Top News” section will remain free.
The Times may be able to pull this hybrid “free to a point” strategy off, at least for a while, because it has a strong national/global brand, a large stable of top-name columnists, and (don’t underestimate it) those killer crossword puzzles.
Still, that huge loophole for search traffic and other inbound links to specific stories will probably cut substantially into the Times’ potential revenue from this strategy. Consequently, there’s reason to be skeptical whether even such a porous paywall will bring in sufficient revenue to justify the effort. But at least this strategy is generous enough that it probably won’t hurt the Times’ efforts too much.
In general, paywalls of any sort only work for content that is uniquely valuable—and the vast majority of general news content, no matter how well prepared and packaged, is not uniquely valuable from the audience’s perspective.
This is especially true for sub-national daily newspapers. Even if you are the only daily paper in your market, your audience always has other sources of news and information. This means your news content is probably viewed as a commodity, which makes any kind of paywall especially risky.
The Times plan takes effect for US readers on March 28—as Paid Content quipped, “allowing the NYT to avoid April Fools’ jokes.” The plan already applies now to Canadian readers.
For more details, read the official Times digital subscriptions FAQ. Also, Paid Content has created its own unofficial FAQ for the strategy. The difference in publisher vs. user perspective can be seen in this telling detail: the first question on the Times’ FAQ is: “How do I subscribe?”—while the first one on the Paid Content FAQ is: “When does the Times start charging for online access?”
MORE CONTEXT: Aaron Chimbel wrote in Online Journalism Review about why the Times’ paywall strategy is ineffective.
The News for Digital Journalists blog is made possible by a grant to USC Annenberg from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
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