As for my $100 million estimate, which is conservative, Buttry claims that he flat doesn’t buy it. Shock. But he also claims I haven’t showed my work. Well, here you go. You have to back into numbers sometimes, as I did a few months ago with Buttry’s bankrupt employer. We don’t just pull numbers out of our you-know-whats.
And he actually says this: “In fact, about the only people repeating the fiction that it’s tough to make money online are those in the newspaper business.”
Um, your own newspaper company is bankrupt.
Finally, apologies to all you regular Audit readers who find the paywall fight tedious. This would just be another edition of Someone Is Wrong On The Internet, but this is much more about what passes for argumentation about a critical subject. Besides, these fallacious arguments are having real consequences, all around the country.
The Washington Post listened for too long. Thankfully, it looks like it’s finally learned its lesson.
To give credit where it’s due, Buttry does attempt to offer what actually qualifies as evidence of his position.
He provides an anecdote from a paywall at a “small regional daily” that has garnered fewer than 300 subscribers in its first few months. Okay. But we’re not told anything about this paywall. Is it a hard and fast one like the Times of London? Is it a meter? How expensive is it? How good or bad is the paper it’s trying to sell?
If you want this anecdote to mean anything, much less disprove that newspapers “gain additional revenue through subscriptions and lose little if anything in digital ads” with modern paywalls, as I wrote, then you have to know all of these questions and more.
But hey, it’s a start.
(2:08 p.m. I added “modern” to paywall in the sixth paragraph above)
— Further reading:
Anti-paywall dead-enders: Why worry about evidence when you can argue against straw men?
Owens’s straw man army. A commentator takes 10 swings at paywalls, and misses each time
Thanks for the attention, Ryan. I'm tired of this argument: http://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2012/12/13/i-am-so-tired-of-the-paywall-argument/
You also should check your link to the $25 million estimate. It's busted.
#1 Posted by Steve Buttry, CJR on Thu 13 Dec 2012 at 11:45 AM
The link should be fixed now.
#2 Posted by Greg Marx, CJR on Thu 13 Dec 2012 at 12:11 PM
Ryan, you just don't get it, man. Charging people for something you produce that has value--that's yesterday's business model. TODAY's business model is grifting a bunch of VC idiots into funding you for 5-6 years while you try to take over the world with buzzwords and user-generated content! We have to innovate for tomorrow's business model! Which is...something NEW! Which someone will invent THEN!
And we'll have FoN FoN FoN 'till her daddy takes the T-Bird away.
#3 Posted by Edward Ericson Jr., CJR on Thu 13 Dec 2012 at 01:49 PM
Not that I don't like the pay wall to wall debate but can we get back to the fun stuff?
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/outrageous-hsbc-settlement-proves-the-drug-war-is-a-joke-20121213
This could use some tying in to thatbusiness with Wells Fargo and some contrast with what happened with BCCI.
#4 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 13 Dec 2012 at 04:54 PM
Steve Buttry: Manny Pacquiao's sentiments exactly.
#5 Posted by Weldon Berger, CJR on Fri 14 Dec 2012 at 11:48 AM
The legacy press has not done anything innovative or experimental. Paywalls do not address the tectonic shift in the way people get news -- from everywhere, even in foreign languages, across multiple devices, and much of it is now "personal" news (family, friends, colleagues) not local, city, state, national, international news. And much of the best news gathering is done by independents.
Paywalls are unable to price by value received and ability to pay.
For news sites that have wildly divergent audiences, not pricing by value and ability to pay means that many people don't pay, who would pay. For example, an international news site with a worldwide audience cannot charge an avid reader in Bangladesh the same price as a resident of NYC. There ARE ways to segment based on value received and ability to pay, but one flat price for everyone that only a well-off person in a first world country can pay is not a viable long-term revenue stream as news upstarts with lower costs bases and crowdsourced reporting gain market and mind share.
Thanks to Steve Buttry for staying in the fray. I used to be the 8th person that cared about this debate, but no longer.
Just because some of us now decline to participate in the banter, doesn't mean we don't care. It just means we've given up and moved to other market spaces that are more open to innovation.
By the way, there is one piece of information about the NYTimes subscriber base -- those paying full price -- that has never been revealed - the mean and average ages. My guess is the ages are high, and that the younger people will not, as they get older, all of a sudden start paying for the NYTimes given that they have "grown up" with other sources of news. I wish one of the 7 people that still cared about this issue would do some research on this topic.
#6 Posted by Cynthia Typaldos, CJR on Fri 14 Dec 2012 at 06:46 PM
DDay did a riff on that Taibbi 'HBSC drug war scandal' article and Felix Salmon's defense of it:
http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/12/14/felix-salmons-unpersuasive-argument-to-hold-hsbc-and-its-executives-harmless/
*stirring the pot*
#7 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Sat 15 Dec 2012 at 10:52 AM