Thursday, April 7, 2011
A threat to this blog
One of the big issues for journalists in today’s internet-dominated society is how to earn money when people no longer have to pay for newspapers. Some websites rely on advertising alone, while others make you subscribe and pay for at least some, if not all, of their articles. It looks as if one of the good sources this blog’s articles may be disappearing. The New York Times will now charge to look at content. On a practical level, is such a paywall tenable? Or is it full of holes as this writer claims? On a more ethical level, is this undemocratic? Or is it a reasonable business decision? How can we as citizens support a high-quality press which all can have access to, if this is even possible?
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I don’t think that it is a right move for NY Times to use the paywall system they announced. It can be seen on the example of the London Times. They made their site subscription-only and the number of readers decreased by 87 % from 21 million to roughly 2,7 million. The problem with this case is that it is not just a single occurrence, but it is a progressing trend. Even here in Slovakia will soon many of the most popular news provider sites launch a digital subscription system called Project Piano.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, it seems to me that the price for the paywall is too high. Large part of the costs is eliminated because the journalists publish the articles on the web and they don’t pay for printing and distribution. However, the difference between buying printed newspaper and paying for the online edition is only between 5 and 15 dollars a month (depending on the subscription plan).
Secondly, I think they didn’t count with human psychology. Let’s pretend you are a reader of NY Times and you read articles on their site every day. How would you feel if someone told you that everything that you was used to and was free for the last gazillion years will suddenly become subscription-only? I personally would feel somehow betrayed or at least disappointed. Then I can understand the decrease of readers in the case of the London Times mentioned above. Also there is the fact that NY Times is not a monopoly. The reader can whenever he wants change his news provider with a relative ease. If the NY Times site will become subscription-only, the customer will have many different news providers on the Internet to choose from.
Other thing to consider is the fact that most internet sites are financed solely from the advertisement and commercials. Then why it is not enough for the news providers? I think they are just driven by the greed and the vision of higher revenues. There are many larger sites that have more employers than NY Times and many of other news providers and still their content is provided for free for everyone.
Just as a sidenote I would like to say that the system the NY Times used is not very robust. Just try to google keywords like “paywall hack” or similar and you will find tons of results with very simple tutorials and tricks how to have access to the whole NY Times site without the need to subscribe and pay anything.
To conclude, in my opinion the idea of charging for the content will not work. I think there are many issues involved with it and people are just used to don’t pay for the news on the Internet. This is an issue that is hard to overcome as there will always be many sites that provide the same information for free.
In my opinion NY Times’ decision to use the pay wall system is a correct decision. Many people share an opinion that NY Times will lose readers and eventually lose a lot of profit like London Times did. What London Times did was that they also used the pay wall system together with advertising. They eventually lost so many readers that even companies stopped putting advertisements in their news. London Times’ revenue from advertisement dropped, they have so little readers pay wall system is at lost and they are still trying to recover from this blow.
ReplyDeleteNY Times is different from London Times. They are the most popular online newspaper website in the world with about 1.8 million readers per day. NY Times are considered to be one of the most respectable newspapers and their articles, both online and on paper, have high level of quality. Furthermore, the pay wall system they use is a severe improvement since the London Times “experiment”. The pay wall system is set only for people that read more than 20 articles per month, thus heavy users. Light users that read less than 20 articles pay nothing. In my opinion it is a good system; it makes people that read lots of articles pay the amount they would pay for the paper news.
Many people are certainly against the pay wall, as they think that advertisement should be more than enough for the NY Times. If your news are read by 1.8 million people each day then companies going to pay a lot for their ad spaces. The other common argument against is simply to say that a lot of people will read other news, use other source and NY Times will lose majority of their users. I mean the internet makes the world as free as it has never been and everybody can find their own sources of information. However, I must say that I use NY Times a lot since their articles seem to be at higher level of quality than let’s say SME or Huffington Post, the source is more reliable and they cover a lot of topics which makes it easier than to browse two or three different websites.
I enjoy reading NY Times from time to time and see no difference why should I quit. I am a light user, reading about fifteen to eighteen articles a month and won’t pay a dime. Those, who work and earn big bucks and need constant flow of information should and will pay which is fair in my honest opinion. But let’s just hope it is only NY Times that is pay walled.