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Would You Pay For The New York Times?
We recently discussed the release of the new £2.39 Guardian application and the implications of newspapers attempting to ‘paywall’ access to new content. Today, it seems The New York Times are poised to release a press statement on the matter. Reports suggest The NYT will formally announce a ‘metered paywalling system’ for its website. This would enable users to browse a limited number of pages within the site before being prompted to enter credit card details. The motivation for Rupert Murdoch to take such measures seems clear: online advertising revenues are yielding less than sales from traditional print media.
Consumer opinion seems to be divided. Internet users have been primed over the past decade or so to expect free content. In addition, The New York Times must compete with a whole array of free blogs and news outlets offering virtually identical content. The trade off it seems, may be to sacrifice website traffic for a slight uplift in revenue. By paywalling specific content areas of the site, The New York Times are jeopardising their page ranking in Google. The reason for this being that if users refuse to pay for content, they cant link back to the site and thus improve its overall performance in popular search engines such as Google and Bing.
Some commentators suggest that revenues are an important component of quality control and ensuring the ongoing success of any publication. What do you think?
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