New York Times' Pay Wall

To pay wall or not to pay wall, that has been the question.

Well the NYT did it -- they instituted the pay wall. (Paywall?? -- AP finally dropped the hyphen in email and the spaces in cellphone, smartphone and handheld -- although the hyphen remains in e-book and e-reader. Pay wall still has a space - perhaps because it is still a chasm for most newspapers).

But I digress. Only 3 months behind schedule, the Times has finally announced its new pay scheme. The critics are rolling their eyes, the schemers are figuring out ways around the fence, but I think Ken Doctor at the Nieman Labs has analyzed it best. The Times has, like every other newspaper in the universe, lost print subscribers, print revenue and while increasing digital subscribers, has not created a business model to sustain the legacy and additional digital workflows and deliveries. In other words, the Times had to do something.

Unlike the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times, which hawk (chest beat) important business news, which in turn mandate that all businesses subsidize subscriptions for its employees (or at least the top echelon), the NYT and other newspapers, is a nice to have. Supported by aficianados, news junkies and advertising, the NYT et al are trying to figure out how to get non-print subscribers to pay for content. It is a very slippery slope since the Times' brass does not want to (further) erode print subscribers -- but they do want a mechanism to be able to charge said aficianados.

I think they have done a fairly good job. The new price points will capture some digital-only readers at a weekend-delivery pricepoint -- which is far higher than the Journal's annual subscription fee. While the paper may see some churn in the 7-day a week home delivery (a $600 a-year-habit) vs $195 for all digital, it protects the all-important-Sunday home delivery price of $197 a year. Sure some of the $680m subscription franchise might be at risk, home delivery bears a much higher cost of good. If news print fades to black and the Time can convert a growing percentage of news readers to digital only at the rate of $200 a year -- management will be only too happy to jettison print readers -- and greatly improve margins.

Who knows, in a few years, it may be that the diehard print readers will be anteing up big premiums to continue that home delivery.