Opening My Wallet For Media Consumption

Posted by Darren on Jan 18, 2010 • (Comments)

Being that I work in the digital media industry, there is rarely a day that goes by without some conversation around free vs. paid.  Some folks in the office say that they would gladly pay ~$20 for the NY Times online and others argue that they won’t pay anything because eventually they will hear the news anyway.  I think this argument is less about actually paying for the news but more about paying for timely access to it.  If you could read the news *first,* shouldn’t there be a price to that?

Much of these conversations are being sparked by the reports of the NY Times Online putting up some sort of paywall.

Here is what I think they should do:

Go to a pay model, but the pay model should be for the first 12 hours of any article/story.  Meaning, if the Times publishes an article about the latest angel investment I made, then for the first 12 hours of that article’s existence on the Times online, it would only be accessible by subscribers.

Why I think this works:

  1. Online subscription model generates revenue for the NY Times
  2. Stories go “public” after 12 hours, which allows for page consumption (and views) beyond the subscriber base thus increasing inventory for the NY Times sales force to sell against (advertising)
  3. Online subscription model creates a velvet rope, less-so about actually consuming the content, but more-so about recency of consumption (all about getting it first)

What are your thoughts?  Think this can work?  I think this model can move well beyond the NY Times, no?

Tagged as , , , , , , , , + Categorized as Advertising & Marketing, Internet & Web X.0, Media & Entertainment
  • offthehook
    The key question is - what kind of content readers are willing to pay to read vs what kind of content people wouldn't pay for?

    If the Washington Post had a similar story on sailing and you can read it right away for free, instead of pay for subscription to NYT or wait 12 hours, readers would simply switch to Washington Post. So proprietary content is key.

    I think major newspapers should focus on producing proprietary, high-value investigative reports / breaking stories. Readers are more likely to pay for these content and they want to read them right away. These national newspapers would start to consolidate and refocus their editorial strategies. Sports section would only live on local newspapers. Columnists would become bloggers who sell their columns to national newspapers. They can also make more money by blogging and own their content. The same goes with movie / shows / restaurant reviews. The reviewers sell certain number of reviews to the newspapers for brand association and contracts, but they can still post other reviews on their own blogs.
  • Jeremy
    Isn't this the same model that the old TimesSelect model had? Any key differentiators you can think of why this would work while that didn't (besides that it was only for editorial vs. the whole paper)?
  • I'm a big believer in paying for timely access to stuff, but in the case of newspapers I don't actually think it's their best core value...to me their core is historically divided between timely information and delivering quality information...in the 'real time' web, it's going to be near impossible for newspapers to continue to compete on 'timely' (when they in fact have no better sources than the rest of us to events as they unfold)...but where they can, and I think should, continue to dominate is in the quality realm...with a professional journalism background, they are poised to identify, aggregate, and report on topics to a depth that the average blog/twitter/facebook just can't or won't...what I'm thinking of is a human driven digg (driven by professional journalists who also add to or augument the things they find with points of view and/or research and facts)...

    So the question is, would you pay for access to a collection of 'experts' who are pointing out and expanding upon the 'best' news out there? I know I would because it would save me time and be an easy way to keep me "in the know"...and I suspect a large number of other people would too...
  • Adam Epstein
    Completely agree - that is exactly the right strategy.

    I could even envision a three-tiered system:

    News Alerts = free - with link to...
    Premium coverage of breaking stories (incl. sports) = 12-24 hours
    Features, profiles, analysis, NYT magazine = 1 week

    I think you just saved newspapers.
  • If we just saved newspapers, can we have a piece of the forward action?
  • fendien
    You give the example of an angel investment which I think would be covered by blogs and Twitter in enough detail to warrant waiting 12 hours to read the NYT version.

    My question is in what topics do you think NYT will offer premium/unique enough content to charge, that one will not find in other papers/blogs/twitter etc. I would think their key benefit is their editorials, which obviously are not time sensitive under the 12hr timeframe to wait. So is there really a case where this would be beneficial to have a subscription for this leg up on reading?
  • Point taken, but I think even their bespoke coverage of a subject will warrant enough that people may want to pay for that content. Example is a sailing story they ran a few months back (http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/travel/15s...) that I was intrigued by- I read the article when it was first published and had circulated it to a few people. I got the "credit" for curating.
blog comments powered by Disqus