Culture

New York Times to Charge for Content in 2011: Good Luck with That

by Truemorist | January 20, 2010 at 11:30 am

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The New York Times will start charging for content in 2011. I think they're delaying the move so that they can have eleven more months of healthy traffic. The New York Times played with their little paywall before, and it didn't work out. Besides being easy to get around for anyone with more web savvy than a newborn kitten, the problem with the paywall was that it didn't contain anything truly worth paying for. AP articles? Typical MSM stories?

Easily attainable on just about any other site on the planet. Local news? They're up against a pretty crowded room of competitors there. With online content that is so easily replicated, the alternative to giving it away is obscurity.

The New York Times announced Wednesday that it intended to charge frequent readers for access to its Web site, a step being debated across the industry that nearly every major newspaper has so far feared to take.

Yeah, they "feared to take" that road because it leads to the town of Reduced Trafficsville, USA.

Wall Street Journal also charges for content. When's the last time you actually paid for it? ... Yeah.

It's unclear whether the Times will make their paywall equally porous, although, if they do, the tech-savvy, high-volume readers will find a way through it. In that case, why erect it in the first place?