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Observations-New York Times Paywall: What everyone else seems to be missing

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Re: Observations-New York Times Paywall: What everyone else seems to be missing

#21

Post by lloydarmbrust » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 7:33 PM UTC

dreamdu5t wrote: post #20

redthrowaway wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because clearly paywalls are the only way a journalist can possibly get paid, right?

No, the other way is to sell articles individually. Why are you being obtuse? Why is purchasing by subscription bad, but selling articles individually good? There are benefits to both. Personally, I'd rather pay a subscription because I read a lot of articles and buying them individually would be a pain in the ass.

Newspapers have been subsidized by advertising for over 100 years, why are we trying to make money from subscriptions now?

Re: Observations-New York Times Paywall: What everyone else seems to be missing

#22

Post by dreamdu5t » Sat, Jul 23, 2011, 9:35 PM UTC

lloydarmbrust wrote: post #21

dreamdu5t wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the other way is to sell articles individually. Why are you being obtuse? Why is purchasing by subscription bad, but selling articles individually good? There are benefits to both. Personally, I'd rather pay a subscription because I read a lot of articles and buying them individually would be a pain in the ass.

Newspapers have been subsidized by advertising for over 100 years, why are we trying to make money from subscriptions now?

Because advertising wasn't covering NYT's costs, and easily allows people to scrape and replicate your content elseware without ads.

If NYT was able to stay profitable with ads on their site, they wouldn't have thrown up the paywall to begin with.

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