By Sree Sreenivasan
DNAinfo Contributing Editor
It was the worst-kept secret in the media business: The New York Times was hatching a plan to charge for access to its site, sacrificing page views for a new revenue stream. So it was a bit anti-climactic when, after months of speculation and rumors, the NYT announced last week that it would begin doing just that.
The model nytimes.com is planning to use — charging those who want more than a handful of articles a month, while still giving free access for print subscribers — isn't all that revolutionary. The Financial Times has had a similar "metered" plan in place for years now.
What was surprising was the proposed date for the initiative's launch: Early 2011. That seems like a long way off.
So I turned to C.W. Anderson, assistant professor at the City University of New York and watcher of newspapers trying to figure out the digital world, for his perspective.
Here's what he wrote to me:
I don't know if the Times' decision to announce they were putting up metered paywall — in a year — was a good idea or a bad idea from a roll-out perspective. I do know, though, that it struck me as a very strange way to let the world know about what is ultimately a profound business decision.
It's certainly not the "webby" way to roll out a new product. On the Web, I think we've gotten used to the notion that we'll hear about a new feature one week before it happens. Or even one week after its *already* happened! Here, the Times is saying, "we've just agonized over this for a year, and we're going to do it, but wait another year while we actually figure it out." It's very Hamlet-esque.
They could be hoping that the ad market recovers by 2011 and they can actually drop the whole pay wall idea altogether. Or they might be hoping that we'll have all gotten so used to the idea of paid content in a year that the notion won't seem strange. Or they might really have no idea what they're doing. Or some combination of the three.
The paper's response to those questioning the timing came in the paper's own story about this, written by Times media reporter, Richard Pérez-Peña: “There’s no prize for getting it quick,” said Janet L. Robinson, the company’s president and chief executive. “There’s more of a prize for getting it right.”
This isn't the first time that the NYT has danced with a pay model.
It launched TimesSelect in 2005, charging about $50 a year for access to its opinion pieces and other selected material. The service generated $10 million a year in revenue, but drew criticism from various Times watchers and bashers. Among the most unhappy where some of the paper's star columnists who loved having their work read around the world. Those readers, and the corresponding perception of influence, dropped when the wall went up.
In 2007, TimesSelect was shut down. The site's general manager, Vivian Schiller, now at NPR, said at the time: "We now believe by opening up all our content and unleashing what will be millions and millions of new documents, combined with phenomenal growth, that that will create a revenue stream that will more than exceed the subscription revenue."
The new move is a complete U-turn by the company. The fact is, no one really knows what is going to work online long-term. Will the "digital pennies" of online advertising ever catch up with the print dollars that are disappearing? And unlike the FT and the Wall Street Journal, whose pay sites work because they offer actionable business content, will people pay for general news content that the Times offers?
What we do know is that it isn't going to be easy to get people to pay for content, but perhaps the current, moderate, success in getting people to pay for music, phone apps, ringtones and books on e-readers might create a culture where free isn't the only way to go.
