New York Times Paywall Won't Hit Vast Majority Of Readers: WSJ

The New York Times will introduce multiple subscription packages for its website when it unveils its paywall in early February, the Wall Street Journal reports--but the paper's much-vaunted paywall won't hit the vast majority of its readers.

The paper will sell a basic monthly subscription to NYTimes.com, as well as one that groups the online subscription with one for the Times' iPad app, the Journal's Russell Adams writes. Subscribers to the paper will get unlimited access to the site.

However, a subscription will only be needed for so-called "heavy users" of the site, since people will only have to pay after they've read a certain number of articles online. Adams writes that 85% of the Times' estimated 30 million unique viewers will not hit that limit. Moreover, people who arrive at a Times article through a search engine like Google will always be able to read the first page of that article, even if they've ostensibly run into the site's paywall.

Comments

[deepfreezevideo]

02:45 AM on 03/06/2011

What's really stupid about this is, if they'd charge a flat five bucks a month, 90 percent of the readers would just pay up and they'd probably have an online readership of close to a half billion.
Instead they're counting on "heavy users" to pony up $14.95 a month, which is too damn high.
I said it a long time ago, the way to make this succeed is to just follow the porn model.

But do they listen? Nooooooooooo!

[Lozlo]

12:27 AM on 01/26/2011

I pray this works. Everyone talks about other reliable sources of news. Someone please name one.

[Save the NYT]

05:01 PM on 01/25/2011

With or without the pay wall, the Times needs to get serious about cutting costs. On revenues of $2-3bn, and $20m in profit, the projected revenue from the website isn't going to save the company. New leadership is needed. The family hasn't produced great leaders (see the latest addition to the board - a family member who is a psychologist!) When are investors going to intervene? Who is going to save the NYT?

[RumiSouth]

03:18 AM on 01/25/2011

The NYT keeps trying paywalls and they keep not paying out. What was that about the definition of insanity again?

[interlude]

02:04 AM on 01/25/2011

See ya, NYT. It was nice while it lasted.

[sonofsarek]

01:29 AM on 01/25/2011

I read the NYT...but I don't HAVE to.

Like I can't get my news from somewhere else?

Furthermore, why would I pay for a paper that supported going into Iraq? If I wanted a brainless extension of the Pentagon I would read the Washington Times.

[The Wallet]

11:57 PM on 01/24/2011

Love the NYT but you couldn't PAY ME to read it.. Get Comcast to pay YOU anf good luck with that..

[TomFinch]

11:44 PM on 01/24/2011

Back when the World Wide Web (remember that?) was causing the dot.com bubble, there was talk of incremental billing for things such as reading one article from the NYTimes for 5 cents or even less. PayPal almost got it right, but got greedy.

How about a penny each from 30 million viewers?
The Times would say no $300,000?

[Callyson]

11:33 PM on 01/24/2011

From the WSJ link above:
The person familiar with the matter said the Times has considered charging around $20 a month for the digital bundle and less than half that for the Web-only offering.
--------
If this is correct, I could read it for around $10 a month, I just won't be able to get it on my phone. I can live with that--hate paying for what used to be free but I do understand that the NYT can't live on love, and despite the many problems it has had it is still the best paper in the country, so I guess I better adjust my budget now...
...oh, and thank you, HuffPo, for remaining a free website.
:-)

[studioh!]

11:59 AM on 01/27/2011

$10 a month - for now!

[DavidHeart]

09:47 PM on 01/24/2011

A very reasonable approach. This has legs.

And it's not the Front Page, it's the First Page of every article.

[davewill]

08:07 PM on 01/24/2011

The first page???? So, they want to have Google and Yahoo market their content, but don't want to pony up the content? Good luck with that.

[kapalabhati]

07:36 PM on 01/24/2011

I didn't read the article; I just loved the front page.
Go Steelers!

[Roadgeek]

06:11 PM on 01/24/2011

One way to bypass it- anonymous proxy server. A fresh IP every few articles.

[davewill]

08:08 PM on 01/24/2011

Not really. Those IPs aren't random, you know. NYT can always block them, or count all the users trying to access from there.

[Leviathan21]

05:38 PM on 01/24/2011

I guess you could just google every article that you want to read and access it that way. It'll be inconvenient, but it's possible to go around the system and still read everything you want to read. 

Still, I think I'll buy the subscription because I think it's worth it.

[TFlint]

04:23 PM on 01/24/2011

Reasonable.