The New York Times, like most news outlets currently in—which is to say, currently fighting for—existence, is spending much of its time these days alternately analyzing, fearing, and being inspired by a single term: “paid content.” Over the weekend, we learned of one hypothetical paid-content strategy currently under Times Company consideration: graded “memberships” to the Times, in the general model of museum patronage plans. A TimesSilver package, available at $50 a year, would include “FirstLook” access to stories, access to (the currently free) TimesWire and (the currently mostly-free) TimesMachine archive, and other perks. A Gold membership, for $150 a year, would include all that plus access to TimesEvents (paper-sponsored conferences, etc.) and TimesInsider (personal access to some writers, tours of the Times building, etc.).
Though the packages described are currently only theoretical—“it’s very early in the process,” NYT spokeswoman Diane McNulty noted—their consideration also sheds light on the general direction of the paid-content strategizing in which the Times is currently engaged.
But: is that direction the right one? The news-business analyst Martin Langeveld, writing over at Nieman Lab yesterday, argued that the Times’s speculative strategy has the paid-content calculus precisely backwards: that readers will be much more willing to pay for niche information—on travel, gardening, film, finance, and the like—than for “elite” memberships based on a more generalized approach to access. “Few people are willing to pay for broad news content, no matter who they get to rub shoulders with,” Langeveld writes, “but many people are willing to pay for content relevant to their passions.”
CJR’s Michael Shapiro, writing in the current issue of the magazine, took a stance similar to Langeveld’s: “People will pay for news they deem essential,” Shapiro had it, “and depending on the depth and urgency of their need, they will pay a lot. Their subscriptions, in turn, might well help to underwrite the cost of producing original work that might remain free and be of interest to more than a select few.”
What do you think? Are people generally happier—and, more to the point, likelier—to pay for information that feeds their passions, rather than for experiences that do? Must it be an either/or proposition, or is there a way for news organizations to leverage both goods? And, to revisit an old question: What, when it comes to online news, would you pay for?
Expensive enough that casual browsers won't buy it, and cheap enough that it will have no real impact on revenue. Sounds perfect!
#1 Posted by Shii, CJR on Tue 28 Jul 2009 at 01:34 PM
I agree with Langeveld: the Times, here, seems to be fundamentally misunderstanding what news means to most people ("most people" being users across the country, not merely those who happen to live in Manhattan). The Silver/Gold membership strategy is predicated on the assumption that readers are as fascinated with the process of journalism--reporting, data-gathering, story-producing, etc.--as the Times's fellow journalists are. But most non-journalists I know--hell, even most journalists I know--care much more about the product of journalism: information that, generally and in varying ways, nourishes us.
In other words: it's a mistake to broadly fetishize "access." In this age of information overload, it's all most of us can do simply to keep up with the day's headlines; it's a privileged few who have the time, let alone the inclination, to explore Times journalism behind the scenes. And it's an even smaller group, I'd think, who'd be willing to pay for that privilege.
Still, none of that automatically delegitimizes the Times's entire membership plan. Because, when it comes down to it, the interests of "most people" may not matter. In fact, as Michael Shapiro suggested, the most effective strategies when it comes to paid content may be leveraging the (narrow) interests of the few to serve the (broad) interests of the many. And that could apply just as readily to informational interests as to experiential ones.
The only way the Times (and others) will learn for sure what people will pay for, when push comes to shove, is by testing their paid-content hypotheses among news consumers. And by, more to the point, being willing to fail, initially, on the way to discovering what works. TimesSelect, for example, may have failed by conventional standards; still, it provided a valuable data point that continues to inform the discussion of paid content throughout the news community. The Times, essentially, took one for the team on that one; and I'd hope that the paper, and its many counterparts throughout the industry, will keep alive the idea that, in this heated media climate, the failed experiments with paid content can be just as instructive as the successful ones.
#2 Posted by Megan Garber, CJR on Tue 28 Jul 2009 at 01:58 PM
The Times is different than most papers, because it has two distinct audience segments: New Yorkers and the rest of the country. It can treat New Yorkers like museum-goers, but what non-New Yorker will travel to a conference? Also, being out of state, I never read the Metro section, for instance.
The Times could theoretically, and perhaps ought to, have two distinct plans, one for locals and one for the rest of the country. That would also be good for advertisers.
#3 Posted by Gutenberg, CJR on Wed 29 Jul 2009 at 11:31 AM
As far as readers are willing to pay for the web looks to me a difficult proposition. Just for analogy sake, look at what is happening with the terrestrial and satellite radio. In this part of the geography there are no takers for a paid satellite radio. Even if there are, it’s a very miniscule population. Why pay for music radio station when you so many free non-stop radio channels are available. The niche will never survive the business. The only possible brand and marketing strategy is to rope in advertisers with cross media promotion packages and at sustainable rates so that web ventures of the print media can be sustained. Since web is a global access medium it works well for companies that are in multiple geographies wanting to promote and reach the right target audiences in a cost effective manner. Theoretically, sustaining the web should and ought to be a far cheaper model by building cross synergies amongst the print and web teams to produce, than producing a print edition. It is already happening!
However fragmentation to the level of selling each single story is not going to work. What is certain is that elite media will need to take into account the persistent assaults of blogs and other media outlets. The outlets should broad base its reach by allowing access to content beyond their marketing geographies, while having a dual payment model of advertiser funded and user payment model to sustain their local operations. This will give important fill-up in terms of revenues but also generate eye-balls for premium advertisers.
More over there are so many sophisticated tools today to authenticate the numbers and sell it to advertisers.
#4 Posted by V.V.Sundar, CJR on Fri 31 Jul 2009 at 02:05 AM