So the Times has decided to end Times Select. I wonder if they're refunding the money to those who recently paid for a full year subscription?
Felix Salmon thinks they were undone by the search engines:
Everybody knows that Google has won the search-engine war. But what's much more important is that Google has won the search war – and the latest casualty is TimesSelect. The subscriber firewalls at the WSJ and the FT will be the next to go.Until Google came along, most content-based websites had a similar business model: users would come to the site's home page, search for what they were looking for, and then find it. So if you wanted a NYT story, you'd first go to nytimes.com, and then search. If you wanted a Wikipedia article, you'd first go to wikipedia.org, and then search.
No longer.
When I want to find one of my old blog entries on portfolio.com, I just type the search terms into the Google window in my browser. When I want to find a Wikipedia entry, I do the same thing, in the knowledge that Wikipedia's PageRank will guarantee that entry a top-two spot. Google's even very good at finding books on Amazon.
But Google is very bad at pointing people to anything behind a subscriber firewall – and rightfully so.
Perhaps. But color me skeptical. Internet advertising is still sufficiently problematic that anyone who can charge for a web subscription will probably be better off than getting a lot of low-quality eyeballs from search engines. Low-quality, that is, in terms of ad rates--no apersions on my googling readers.
Advertisers will pay more to reach Businessweek's readers than they will to reach the readers of, say, Time because Businessweek's readers are a much more attractive demographic to sell into. Free publications are the worst: who knows who's picking it up, or why? That's why classifieds and personal ads from people looking to meet other poor people tend to dominate the revenue stream of free weeklies. As far as advertisers are concerned, most google searchers are closer to the guy who picks up the Pennysaver, than to someone you'd deliberately buy an ad to reach. Google overcomes this by targeting ads to the search, but that's so far not a viable strategy for any major paper; the news costs too much to gather.
The problem with Times Select was not, IMHO, that they weren't getting enough web search; it was that they weren't getting enough subscribers to make it worth the effort of maintaining a complex two-tier system; indeed, subscriptions fell slightly this year from already underwhelming numbers. Which is unsurprising, at least to me. As I argued over a year ago:
That's why I was so surprised by the New York Times' TimesSelect strategy. It seemed unbelievably ass-backwards to me. The Times has always had a distinctly mediocre editorial page (at least since I've been a reader), populated largely by household names whose schtick had already begun to wear a little thin when they joined the page. Its news gathering organisation, on the other hand, is probably the biggest and best in the world, with the exception of the wire services and the BBC. So it decided to give its content away for free in the one area where it has a serious competitive advantage over its rivals, and put a pay barrier in front of its opinion journalism.But it seems to me that with the possible exceptions of Paul Krugman and David Brooks, people read the columnists because they are in the nation's most widely circulated paper, not the other way around. The NYT confused what people read and email each other, with what they will pay for. If those two things were the same, poems about Jesus and pictures of animals dressed up in costumes would have displaced porn and gambling as the internet's biggest industries.
The Wall Street Journal, on the other hand, has nearly a million web subscribers according to Wikipedia, or roughly half their subscription base, paying only a slight discount from the print rate. People subscribe to the Wall Street Journal because it offers the most detailed, in depth daily coverage of American business. If you are at a certain level in American business, you have to have it to know what is going on; therefore, you will pay for it. (Likewise the FT in Britain). Moreover, the fact that you will pay for it makes you more valuable to the publisher as advertiser bait.
I expect that the pay barriers at the Wall Street Journal will therefore remain erect for quite some time. Though possible disconfirming evidence: my old employer has taken down their pay barrier for current content. Though the archives still seem to be behind the wall.
From the Times website:
"Dear NYTimes.com Readers:
Effective Sept. 19, we are ending TimesSelect. All of our online readers will now be able to read Times columnists, access our archives back to 1987 and enjoy many other TimesSelect features that have been added over the last two years – free.
If you are a paying TimesSelect subscriber, you will receive a prorated refund. We will send you an e-mail on Wednesday, Sept. 19 with full details."
So I'll get part of my money back.
The Wall Street Journal, on the other hand, has nearly a million web subscribers according to Wikipedia, or roughly half their subscription base, paying only a slight discount from the print rate.
I have a WSJ online subscription, there was a deal of a year for $20 several months ago. I wouldn't pay much more than that, but it's about what I'd spend in a year to pick up individual issues to read at lunch.
People will pay for facts and research because one service's research may be qualitatively better than another's. With opinion, there's no way to measure which is better. Why should I pay for Maureen Dowd's opinion when a thousand bloggers will give me the same talking points for free? Or a thousand others will give me the opposite talking points for free?
Free weeklies (allegedly) get the bulk of their advertising revenues from ads for escort services and massage parlors. These are pretty much a captive audience because mainstream newspapers won't carry such ads. I would imagine that Craigslist now provides some competition.
It also used to be rumored that the New York Times charged premium rates for Broadway theater advertisements, there being a very good demographic match between the core theater audience and the paper's readership.
I would agree with Megan's assessment. The NY Times was essentially trying to bill people for information that is not relevant to income, well being or time sensitivity. You can find opinion pieces elsewhere. In essence they were trying to charge for recreational reading.
The WSJ is the absolute opposite. It provides information and analysis that is not available elsewhere in such a timely fashion, and further, the website does so at a discount to newstand price. There is a definate value proposition.
And it probably takes WSJ readers to actually know the difference. Felix has it way wrong.
It wasn't just the op-ed material that was behind the paywall. The Times also was charging for access to archived articles.
I was tempted to get TimesSelect for Maureen Dowd and Tom Friedman so I guess that makes me some sort of freak. But, as someone noted, there is so much good free stuff on the internet I decided not to bother spending money.
Which brings me to why I am writing because I know you care nothing about what I wrote so far.
My main concern with the internet is its viability. It is so so full of free speech and compelling ideas that it seems to strike a dagger into the heart of those who once had total control over what we knew and thus what we thought. I assume these people still possess huge power. I cannot believe they are taking their downfall gracefully. We must expect somehow they will strike back to diminish the anarchistic nature of the internet.
We will soon be facing a time where those in power will be able to convince a majority of the people that some free speech is fine but too much is not acceptable or un-American. How they will bring about the restriction on the internet freedom remains to be seen. If I had to guess, I expect through their lobbyists in Congress they will manage to instituted some type of poll tax.
I was tempted to get TimesSelect for Maureen Dowd and Tom Friedman so I guess that makes me some sort of freak.
A freak? No. Why Tom Friedman just discovered that globalization is important (what an epiphany) while Maureen Dowd has learned that men are unnecessary (though the uncharitable might suspect that she has just been jilted too many times).
Anyway, these are really first rate intellects.
cheapshot Isocrates. Can't comment On Maureen's love life but Friedman was trying to tell us about the long-term effects of globalization long before there were blogs.
Michael W, I think you ought to read the follwing excerpt from an article on Friedman's great work by Matt Taibbi.
Matt is a left-wing journalist but I don't hold that against him. He's really quite unfair to poor Friedman though, dont you think? After all, a man who comes up with the brilliant insight that "The world is flat" deserves the highest respect. Who wouldn't pay to read the man's columns? Anyway, you can get the whole scurrilous, outrageous, unfair, appalling and distasteful criticism of the great Friedman here
Why rely on the page rank to search wikipedia. Just specify that you only want stuff with a top level domain of wikipedia.com in the search results:
Google has a lot of nifty features like this.
Actually that should have been wikipedia.org, but wikipedia.* covers everything:
If you are at a certain level in American business, you have to have it to know what is going on; therefore, you will pay for it. (Likewise the FT in Britain). Moreover, the fact that you will pay for it makes you more valuable to the publisher as advertiser bait.
Relatedly, many companies, particularly in the finance space, will pay for subscriptions for their employees to keep them informed. Not so with NYTimes.
The Economist back numbers (from 2000) are available through an ad wall, not a pay wall.
Well, Isocrates I was thinking of The Lexus and the Olive Tree which predates The World is Flat by several years and was pretty damn prescient on globalization and the clash with tribalism. But since you opened this can of worms I'm forced to categorize the world's journalists. Exhibit A would contain anyone working for the execrable Fox News (loved it when Alan Greenspan kept telling the interviewer today he wouldn't discuss today's int.rate drop but said jackass kept bringing it up anyway....but I digress). In another group we would have, for example Tom Friedman who won't pass for Alan Greenspan but is damn sure able to come up with a better foreign policy than, oh, say the entire Bush whitehouse. I could expand but I think the general point is: he's better than most others in the profession and I'd be hard pressed to come up with more than 3 MSM journalists ahead of him (please keep the publication to a greater than 100k readership).
The WSJ is considering the same move. The ad revenue potential is very attractive.
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