Exactly paywall. The thing The Atlantic doesn't want to talk about, however, is that one user paying you a dollar a month makes you as much money as a million users at 1 CPM. Ryan Holiday (there I go again) makes a pretty convincing argument that the modern Internet era is a rerun of the age of Yellow Journalism, when sensationalism and immediate gratification sold newspapers. The end of Yellow Journalism occurred when the New York Times invented the subscription model, which allowed them to have a budget for actual news. The newsmagazines that have survived the print-to-digital experience have largely done so by becoming giant trashy content aggregators. There was an article on Reddit moderators in the Washington Post (!) that pointed out that Reddit gets twice as many readers in a month as CNN - and while CNN has become News Lite, Reddit is the Kittens&Outrage channel. On the flip side, I get most of my actual content from The Week, which charges me $100 a year for something I can read in the sauna (and which gives me access to their content on any mobile device i own). The best content I've seen lately comes from NSFWCorp at their new home at Pando, and they've got a paywall, too (not as tall as NSFWCorp's, but close). Meanwhile, outfits like WSJ and Janes and STRATFOR will give you a couple articles a month for free, but know that the people who rely on their content will happily shell out for a subscription. Something I think most of these discussions miss is that before the Internet, not a whole lot of people read the New York Times. After the Internet, a gajillion people grew entitled to read the NYT whenever they felt like it, but rarely did. This meant that the NYT couldn't really charge the people who had a real reason to read the NYT regularly... but the idea that the NYT should disappear behind a paywall to provide for those core customers was so contrary to the egalitarian ideas of the information revolution that everyone mocked them. In the end, you aren't a NYT customer. You know it and they know it. Reports like this miss the fact that the NYT will succeed if it can charge its customers, regardless of what that does to its non-customers. I think they skip it because it requires pointing out that most of us were never NYT customers and never will be.
The problem that needs solving is that I would be willing to pay the NYT on a per article basis, but subscribing to them in entirety isn't worth it for me. I am not going to read most of their content, nor do I want to read the majority of it. At the same time, I want to read WSJ, WaPo LA Times, the Guardian, etc., to get different points of view on the same subject matter. My options to pay do not reflect my consumption. That's why we ditched cable TV years ago. Ads are the closest thing to micropayments, but they are a corrupting revenue stream. I want an account that I can fill that allows me to pay for content on a per-article bases that includes a large variety of media outlets. I would also love the ability to tip extra for articles I really appreciated. An app like that could possibly increase the reach of serious journalism.
Right. You aren't a NYT customer. Really, you aren't worth their bother. Well, how much would you pay? 'cuz if NYT.com is $7 a month, and you intend to read one article a month, they'd probably have to hit you for $1 an article to make it worth it, which makes you scream "larceny!" People who subscribe to the NYT don't necessarily read it cover-to-cover. Their subscription is also subsidized heavily by ads. We're still staring squarely at the problem of value - most customers don't value the NYT (for example) as heavily as the NYT needs to be valued in order for a partial plan to make sense. That's why none have emerged.The problem that needs solving is that I would be willing to pay the NYT on a per article basis, but subscribing to them in entirety isn't worth it for me.
I want an account that I can fill that allows me to pay for content on a per-article bases that includes a large variety of media outlets. I would also love the ability to tip extra for articles I really appreciated. An app like that could possibly increase the reach of serious journalism.
NYT, I think, is about $12 per month or something thereabouts. I pay it, and I pay it happily. Up until very recently the idea that you get to read the Times or any other paper for free was not even an idea. That is, no one would have ever even conceived that the only thing they were actually paying for was the delivery guy showing up at 5:00 every morning. Seriously, wtf? I love the times (as anyone who follows me can probably figure out), and I would feel like a thief reading it for free every day. It's a valuable part of my morning, and for the <$0.50 it costs me every day (one quarter the price of the coffee I drink while I read, FWIW) there's no reason not to pay. I know that traditional news is dying a wretched death, but I'm going to continue to do my part to keep them on life support for as long as I have the option.
I think the thing that's happening is that all those newspapers that existed as wire-service and ad-delivery media are dying a horrible death. I remain unconvinced that news per se is doomed, but I think we need to acquaint ourselves with a new revenue model other than "dead trees" or "free."
And yet I am reading their content for free where I'd be willing to pay something. It seems sub-optimal. I figure that I read about 3 NYT articles a week, or 12 per month. I would happily pay $0.10 a read, and wouldn't mind ads. So, theoretically they could get $14.40 from me each year before ad revenue. Apparently Facebook's revenue per user is was $6.40 in 2013, and Twitter's was $2.76. Of course, it's apples to oranges, but at least the numbers are in the same neighborhood. With ad revenue, I might be worth $20 per year to NYT. It's far less than the $144 that b_b is paying, but it's significant. I would have to think that they would have run the numbers and decided that it isn't viable. I suppose that one risk is that b_b would convert to a pay-per-read customer, and they wouldn't get four more customers like me to make up the difference. Also, credit card transaction costs are going to eat up a lot of that revenue, especially for customers that read less than I do. Finally, I would be less likely to subscribe to a NYT pay-per-article account than I would to a service that let me pay-per-article across a number of outlets.Right. You aren't a NYT customer. Really, you aren't worth their bother.
Well, on this point we can actually agree. While I believe in certain institutions (NYT happens to be one), I would certainly like to see a media consortium that allows one to have access to multiple platforms. For example if something interesting comes up from a paper in Boise, I'm not going to pay them a month's worth of money for one thing, but they still deserve to get compensated for their writing. What to do in that case? A broad media consortium could be an interesting alternative. However, a behemoth like NYT or WSJ might be insulated from such a group.Finally, I would be less likely to subscribe to a NYT pay-per-article account than I would to a service that let me pay-per-article across a number of outlets.