Category Archives: paywall

paidContent: NYTimes.com Paywall: 12 Percent Of Subs Are International

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"[CEO Janet Robinson] did offer some additional color on the number paywall subs. In particular, about 88 percent are domestic and 12 percent are international. There are also 57,000 subs collectively on Amazon’s Kindle or and Barnes & Noble’s Nook, while the carmaker Lincoln’s sponsorship program that offers free total digital acccess to the NYTimes.com’s most engaged users was 100,000. About 758,000 are home delivery subs that have linked digital accounts."

paidContent:UK: UK Times Plans Upgrade To Its ‘Berlin Wall’

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"The Times is planning some changes to its paid digital model that could lead to more nuanced additions to its current hard in-or-out system. ... Right now, this is at the “gossip” stage. And The Times’ digital editorial director Tom Whitwell denied to paidContent:UK that a meter model will be implemented; he said the current subscriptions are “going very well” and that The Times’ flavour of the model is the right one."

Nieman Journalism Lab: “The price you pay for asking people to pay the price”: Gerry Marzorati on class and the NYT paywall

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Gerry Marzorati of The New York Times: “We’re going to be building a kind of mini website for India ... [India] is an enormous newspaper-reading culture that is only now beginning to transition online, and we want to be there and we want to have a product that not only appeals to Indians, but also Indians in the diaspora who might want information about India from a product that they are now using here.”

Nieman Journalism Lab: The Newsonomics of The New York Times’ pay fence

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Ken Doctor: "Though the FT and the Wall Street Journal have long operated successful pay models, the Times’ leap is a big one: The Times isn’t mainly a business newspaper. If it can succeed charging readers for “general news,” that’s a milestone for newspapers around the world. ...We know that the vast majority of visitors won’t reach the 20-article-view level and won’t bump into the fence. They are fodder for advertising, and a slim few will become more regular users over time. Then, there’s that small percentage — one to three percent — who do pay for digital-only subscriptions, in addition, of course to the print subscribers who will now get 'all-access' ... How open the Times will be to social traffic is a big consideration, as social traffic is the fastest growing source of all traffic, and represents a more engaged audience than search-driven visitors."

Scripting News: Comments on NYT paywall announcement

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Dave Winer: "they did something smart in not charging readers who get to a [New York] Times story through a link from a blog post or tweet. But -- since I am a frequent linker, I wonder why I should pay to read their site, when I'm delivering flow to them. How does that equation balance by me paying them? Maybe they should pay me? Seriously. I have a need to survive too."

New York TImes: Business News You Didn’t Read Here

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Public editor Arthur Brisbane wonders why the New York Times isn't covering its own online subscription plans: "the introduction of the pay model is major news for The Times, for the rest of the newspaper industry, and for Times customers and readers, some of whom have asked me why there hasn’t been coverage. Hence I think there’s a journalistic imperative for The Times to cover it energetically. "

New York Times: Financial Times Digs Gold Out of Data

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"John Ridding, the chief executive of The FT ... said improvements in collecting and mining customer data were a big reason digital sales accounted for 24 percent of The FT’s revenue last year, a big jump from 19 percent a year earlier and a considerably higher percentage than many other publishers can claim. ... Mr. Ridding said The FT was considering joining Google’s new One Pass subscription system, which will take a commission of 10 percent and share customer data with publishers. An iPad without The FT in its digital newsstand might be a losing proposition for both parties. Yet if Apple sticks to its position, Mr. Ridding said, “it would be a shame, not just for us, but for the broader ecosystem that has developed in recent years around these devices. It requires some thought before harm is done."

New York Times: Will James Murdoch Ride a Sky Broadcasting Deal to the Top?

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"[Those] who know James Murdoch often note that he does not relish the newspaper culture the way his father does. He seems to take no delight in the company of reporters and in the sort of gossip that permeates the newspaper world and that his father both traffics in and relishes. ... Internally, executives say James Murdoch understands the future of media and the declining role of newspapers, at least in the financial sense. He has also taken a leading industry role in pushing to charge for news content online, putting The Times of London behind a paywall last year."