The New York Times Officially Starts Construction on Its Pay Wall: “Metered Model” Coming 2011
After much consideration, the New York Times has finally decided to start charging readers for access to its Web site. But not for a while: The Times says it will introduce a “metered model”–which offers a certain number of free visits to NYT.com before requiring a payment–in 2011.
The publisher hasn’t said how much it will charge readers and isn’t offering many other details for now. But subscribers to the print edition will be able to access the site for free.
By adopting the “metered model,” the New York Times (NYT) is emulating the Financial Times, which lets readers peruse up to 10 stories a month before forcing them to buy a subscription to the online paper.
That model isn’t all that different from the subscription strategy employed by News Corp.’s (NWS) Wall Street Journal: While much of the Journal is theoretically behind a pay wall, it’s a fairly permeable one designed to give both casual readers and search engines access to the content. (News Corp.’s Dow Jones owns both the WSJ and this Web site).
Both are have-cake/eat-cake strategies: Generate as big an audience as possible to sell to advertisers while extracting a second revenue stream from hard-core readers. The Times, which is reportedly generating $100 million a year from Web display ads, wants to do the same thing.
The paper has tried a pay wall before. In 2005, it rolled out “Times Select” whereby it cordoned off access to op-ed columnists like Thomas Friedman and to archived stories and other features. That strategy generated around $10 million a year. But it was considered a failed experiment, and the Times dropped the wall in September 2007.
Now, of course, $10 million a year sounds like a nice boost for a paper that lost more than $35 million in its most recent quarter and saw print ad revenue plummet throughout the year.
A New York Magazine story published on Sunday predicted the timing of the announcement, even though New York Times executive editor Bill Keller told me the piece was “long on speculation.”
The New York Times Announces Plans for a Metered Model for NYTimes.com in 2011NEW YORK, Jan 20, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — The New York Times announced today that it will be introducing a paid model for NYTimes.com at the beginning of 2011.
The new approach, referred to as the metered model, will offer users free access to a set number of articles per month and then charge users once they exceed that number. This will enable NYTimes.com to create a second revenue stream and preserve its robust advertising business. It will also provide the necessary flexibility to keep an appropriate ratio between free and paid content and stay connected to a search-driven Web.
Through 2010, NYTimes.com will be building a new online infrastructure designed to provide consumers with a frictionless experience across multiple platforms. Once the metered model is implemented, New York Times home delivery print subscribers will continue to have free access to NYTimes.com.
“Our new business model is designed to provide additional support for The New York Times’ extraordinary, professional journalism,” said Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., chairman of The New York Times Company and publisher of The New York Times. “Our audiences are very loyal and we believe that our readers will pay for our award-winning digital content and services.”
“This process of rethinking our business model has also been driven by our desire to achieve additional revenue diversity that will make us less susceptible to the inevitable economic cycles,” said Janet L. Robinson, president and CEO, The New York Times Company. “We were also guided by the fact that our news and information are being featured in an increasingly broad range of end-user devices and services, and our pricing plans and policies must reflect this vision.”
More details regarding the metered model will be available in the coming months.
[Image credit: etoile]
