It’s not yet that a majority of newspaper websites have adopted this model, but more and more keep announcing just that. The latest: the San Diego U-T (formerly known as the Union-Tribune). The trend has spread to Australian newspapers.

“Hey, I’ve got an original idea! Let’s all follow NYTimes.com!!”

It’s often said that newspaper publishers act like sheep, and that’s clearly the case with “going paid” online. Nearly all the announcements are for programs that mimic NYTimes.com’s “metered paywall” model, where for newspaper websites, users can view 10 or 15 or sometimes 20 articles per month without needing to be paying subscribers or members. Most, too, make their walls “leaky”; e.g., you can just type a headline into a search engine and view a story, even if you’ve bumped past the free-article limit, because you’re coming into the news site from an external source.

Umm, did anyone think that maybe this “X free articles per month” model is not the best one?! Or did everyone just go into sheep mode?

A modest alternative proposal

How about this as an alternative for newspapers that wish to get some portion of their online audience to pay for reading their content:

• Instead of 10 or 15 or whatever “free reads” per month for non-subscribers, make the top 10 (or pick another number) articles of the day free to view for non-subscribers.
• Mix up that selection each day. A columnist who has a great piece one day would be in the free top 10, but not regularly. A review of a blockbuster movie or even a great recipe story might be in a day’s top 10 free reads, but reviews and food stories wouldn’t be included often.

Of course, you’ll notice that I’m suggesting that news website publishers “give away” a lot more content than they do following the “sheep model.” Ten free reads a day: about 300 articles a month; five free a day: 150. It’s nowhere near as skimpy as 10 or 15 articles a month which has become the norm.

Oh well, does everyone really need to know what’s happening in Syria, or that the City Council banned drinking diet sodas in public parks?

The other major difference is that with the sheep model, the non-paying user gets to select what articles to read. He/she might use up the monthly free allotment on coverage of Justin Bieber and the Kardashians, or local stories about bears in garbage cans and drunken co-eds invading people’s houses. (The latter is for real here in Boulder, Colorado; this spring a drunken female student got shot when she stumbled her way into an occupied bedroom where the homeowner kept a loaded gun next to the bed. Yes, she survived.) Oh well, does everyone really need to know what’s happening in Syria, or that the City Council banned drinking diet sodas in public parks?

What I’m suggesting is putting editors back in the driver’s seat (to a degree), by selecting the best 10 (or pick your number) articles or other news content of the day for non-paying website users. The advantage is pretty obvious: Non-paying readers of a newspaper website will be reasonably well informed about the most significant things going on in their communities.

While running a newspaper (and a news website) is a business in most cases, newspapers continue to have a public-service role. I will argue that keeping all of the community’s citizens informed — including those who will never pay a newspaper company a dime — is a good thing. The sheep paywall model doesn’t do that anywhere near as well.

A better bottom line?

What about attracting non-subscribers to start paying for news? I think this model can work, though someone heading a newspaper will have to wake up from sheep mode and give it a try. (Sharp readers will know that the “top stories of the day are free” model already is in practice on the New York Times’ smartphone and tablet apps — but not on the Times’ website.)

Are you sheep, following the (apparently successful) lead of NYTimes.com? Or can you think and act for yourselves?

We can think of the top 10 free articles a day as a marketing technique for a paid digital subscription or membership. If the free web reader enjoys a stellar columnist but only gets to read her work once every couple of weeks or so, that’s incentive to pay for a digital subscription or membership. If a newspaper website has particularly good, say, technology or automotive news coverage, and an online reader only sees the occasional tech or auto story when it makes it into the daily top 10, that’s significant incentive to pay for full access to the news site’s complete content.

Will the model I’m promoting here result in more people deciding that reading the top 10 news articles a day selected by a newspaper website’s editors, without having to pay anything, is enough, so they won’t upgrade to a full-access digital subscription or membership? I don’t have data to back it up, but my educated guess is that if “X” in “X articles per day selected by our editors” is the right number, this model will do at least as well at growing paid digital subscriptions/memberships as the “10 (or 15 or 20) articles per month” sheep model. I’ll place my money on it doing better at enticing more news-website readers to upgrade to paid subscriptions or memberships.

And if I’m right, then citizens in newspapers’ communities will be better informed, even if they choose not to pay for digital news access, and/or print-edition delivery.

So, newspaper publishers: Do you care about news knowledge and news literacy among the citizens of the community you serve? Are you sheep, following the (apparently successful) lead of NYTimes.com? Or can you think and act for yourselves?

Can you try something different, if it makes more sense in the grand scheme of things?

But I haven’t seen many people defending the move, which results in the largest major U.S. metropolitan area without a daily printed major newspaper. Then I’ll step up to the plate. …

1. Goodbye to the stock tables

My first thought at reading about the uproar — and the protests from various quarters, including local advertisers and community leaders, concerned citizen signing a Change.org petition, and of course the unfortunate journalists working at the newspapers (and some of them about not to be) — was to remember how angry lots of people got years ago when more and more newspapers began to cease printing yesterday’s stock tables in their print editions. (The trend truly took hold in the mid 2000s.)

D’uh! Day-old stock prices on newsprint couldn’t compete with online and mobile listings which were easily searchable and as up-to-the-minute as the markets would allow. Newspaper publishers rightfully ignored the complaints of some print-edition readers and stopped the anachronistic practice — yes, giving up on delivering information that people had consumed in print for many decades, but also saving money on newsprint (i.e., printing fewer pages). To continue publishing pages of stock listings in print would have been folly; at best, a few senior citizens might have continued to peruse them, but not enough to make the practice financially viable.

Reducing print editions to three days a week, as the Times-Picayune and Birmingham News are about to do, and no doubt more newspapers will copy in the months and years ahead, is pretty much the same thing. But it’s an amplified version of taking away one piece of a newspaper’s daily offerings; a community uproar is to be expected. T-P management and executives at parent Advance Publications need to weather this metaphorical storm, because there’s no turning back.

The trend line for advertising revenues in print continues to go down for most newspapers, and the trend line for print readers is headed down at an even-steeper level. It’s unrealistic to think that metro newspapers can continue printing seven days a week, lest they go the way of the Rocky Mountain News.

But what about the high percentage of New Orleans residents (especially older people and the poor) who don’t have Internet access, and thus might become less informed about what’s happening in their community because of the T-P’s cutback in print?

I’m unsympathetic. After all, the print edition of the Times-Picayune is not given away free. (Sure, people can go to the library to read a paper copy of the day’s T-P; they also can read the news online at that same library.) If T-P and Advance executives do digital right, they can move those populations to digital news on the non-print days of the week. I’ll explain that in point No. 2.

2. It’s not (just) the web!

In much of the media coverage about the T-P’s print-reduction plans (and I’ve read lots of it), you find many complaints about the company’s website, NOLA.com, not being up to snuff. At The Atlantic, former T-P journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winner John McQuaid has an opinion piece titled “Why a Weak Website Can’t Replace a Daily Newspaper in New Orleans.” At GigaOm, Mathew Ingram writes, “While Advance has promised that it plans to devote more resources to the web, its critics say the company’s existing digital properties don’t exactly fill them with confidence.”

Any major metro newspaper that trims its print schedule really needs to figure out the mobile thing, because that’s where the future audience and revenues are headed

Do you notice the problem? Most everyone writing about the T-P’s transition seems to think that the missing four days a week of print editions will be replaced by the website! And if that’s where NOLA Media Group’s focus is — on expecting readers to view its journalistic product and advertising on a web browser on a computer screen — then there is trouble ahead, and the elderly and the poor may become less informed.

What’s been missing from the conversation about New Orleans is what the Times-Picayune and NOLA Media Group will be doing about news on mobile devices, especially phones. Given the obvious trend toward mobile devices beginning to outnumber computers, that’s where a big portion of the company’s resources and intellectual effort must be steered. (Will this be the case? It’s not looking promising at this point, with the number of T-P journalists about to be laid off estimated at 20-40%.)

Let’s skip across the ocean to Africa for a minute. In much of that continent, land phone lines are impractical, non-existent, or unreliable. But in some of the poorest countries on that continent, it’s common for people to have mobile phones. (Worldwide, 85% of the people on this planet have mobile phones.)

Back to New Orleans, where most people have mobile phones. In the U.S. as a whole, mobile penetration is above 100% for people age 13 and older. (That’s active accounts, with some people having more than one phone; of course, a small percentage of Americans still do not have a mobile phone.) Half of all active mobile phones in the U.S. are now smartphones, and that number will continue to grow.

In an ideal world, perhaps the Times-Picayune and other major metropolitan newspapers could continue to publish daily print editions, or at least print enough to satisfy the demand from the elderly and anti-technology crowd. (That wouldn’t be an ideal world for me; I look forward to the day when printed publications are luxury items, most content is consumed digitally, and the environmental impact of newspaper publishing is lessened significantly.) But daily print publication simply is no longer practical, if newspaper companies are to survive in the digital age.

I humbly suggest that most of New Orleans’ residents can be kept informed throughout the week, even without the T-P printing four days a week. The news company will need to get serious about mobile, and offer (and market!) services that reach the 50% of residents who have smartphones, as well as those still using “feature phones” which have lesser capabilities.

It’s not that difficult to envision a city where residents are alerted to significant local news via mobile-phone alerts and mobile-shortened news reports, whether by smartphone news-alerts or simple text messages on feature phones. If a story is important enough, phone users can read short reports, or smartphone users can read a longer version; or later, they may find a computer to read more, or wait for the next print edition. … Any major metro newspaper that trims its print schedule really needs to figure out the mobile thing, because that’s where the future audience and revenues are headed.

(For an insightful examination of the growth of mobile media, I urge you to read this Atlantic piece by Richard Ting: “Why Mobile Will Dominate the Future of Media and Advertising.”)

I’m not suggesting that the situation in New Orleans is rosy. Obviously, it sucks that many journalists will lose their jobs, and coverage of New Orleans will suffer. But for the Times-Picayune and Advance Publications to heed the call by some in the New Orleans community that it must continue printing seven days a week is not in the interest of having a Times-Picayune news enterprise that can survive long term. The company must make the digital-first transition; postponing this risks the news company getting in truly dire straits not far down the road.

As for the lessened state of journalism in New Orleans, I hope that The Lens, the award-winning investigative and public-interest news non-profit, might expand its reach and influence as a result of a declined Times-Picayune, and be able to hire more reporters and editors. We’ve seen that happen in other cities, such as with Voice of San Diego, which focuses on investigative and public-interest reporting to counter the declines at that city’s major daily newspaper, the U-T.

But what’s happened in New Orleans is inevitable. Let’s deal with it, in New Orleans today, and in other cities tomorrow.

Some news-site user monetization systems truly are “paywalls.” I’m fine with saying that The Times‘ (the UK one) website has a paywall, since you can’t read anything on that site without first taking out a paid subscription — other than rare occasions when The Times drops its paywall, such as it did when the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee was taking place. (As a way for a news organization to get people to pay for reading content online, The Times’ approach is perhaps the dumbest one in existence. Latest reports put its digital subscriber base at 120,000; for a paper of its stature, I’d expect that figure to be much higher with a more-intelligent digital pay model.)

Don’t block people with a “wall”; entice premium users in.

The New York Times’ website, by contrast, does not have a “paywall” (if you ask me), though a large number of writers insist on calling the site’s payment model by that term.

It’s often said that NYTimes.com has a “porous paywall,” which is also “metered.” Translation: If you don’t want to pay for an online subscription (or a print subscription which includes full online access), you can visit the site and view up to 10 articles a month, after which you’ll have to buy a subscription for more. That’s the metered part. The porous part means that you can read more than 10 articles in a month if you click through to a NYTimes.com article from another source that’s providing a link to it — such as a search engine (including news search engines), a blog, or a social-media site like Twitter or Facebook. Those article reads don’t count toward your free monthly article allotment if you’re not a paying subscriber.

NYTimes.com is further porous to the at-least-somewhat technically inclined. It doesn’t take much sophistication on a web browser to defeat the 10-a-month limit. If told that you’ve reached your free limit, you can continue reading NYT articles online by: 1) lopping off the last part of the article URL, after and including the question mark, and refreshing the page; 2) clearing your NYTimes.com cookies from your browser and starting a new browser session; 3) copying the headline into a search engine to find the article, then clicking that link; 4) following NYTimes.com on Twitter and clicking through to articles from there; or 5) setting up multiple free accounts on separate devices (laptop, tablet, smartphone) so that you can read 10 articles a month on each.

Some media experts have suggested that NYTimes.com really is using a “donation model,” since it’s so easy to avoid paying and still read more than 10 of its articles a month. The logic goes: The people who are paying NYT’s “demanded” monthly fee actually are those who want to support Times journalism. It’s not that far removed from the NPR model of funding a serious journalism enterprise; public-radio supporters become “members,” and that’s essentially what NYTimes.com subscribers are. That approach by the New York Times (with upward of 400,000 paying digital subscribers) appears to be working much better than The Times’ (UK) “hard paywall” model.

Perhaps I’m just getting into a semantic argument, but I think that what NYTimes.com actually has established is a “freemium” content system. This is especially obvious on its mobile apps, but it’s also the case on the Times website.

• NYTimes.com smartphone app: Without paying, you can read all the articles in the Top News section, every day; every other section on the app when tapped will prompt you for payment to read articles within. But reading NYT’s selection of top stories and nothing else on the app will keep you pretty well informed — for free. If that’s not enough, you pay to upgrade: Purchase a digital subscription. That’s the freemium model. The iPad app for NYTimes.com works the same way; the pricing is just different.
• NYTimes.com website: I’d argue that the website likewise uses a freemium model. If you can live with reading only 10 free articles a month from the Times, then you’re at the free level. Pay for a subscription to see NYTimes.com’s full content and you’ve bought into its premium upgrade.

What I’d like to see NYTimes.com do is market the “premium” access to its news content as a “membership” offer

Actually, I think that publicly calling the NYTimes.com pay model “freemium” to an audience of news consumers is as foolish as calling it a “paywall.” Both are terms for media geeks.

What I’d like to see NYTimes.com do — and other news sites that in growing numbers are adopting a similar model for getting online users to pay to read news — is market the “premium” access to its news content as a “membership” offer. “Become a member and read everything that the New York Times has to offer on your computer or mobile device. Non-members can read up to 10 articles a month online or read ‘Top News’ articles daily on the Times’ mobile apps.”

Then, if we can scratch the word “paywall” out of the discussion and keep it out of any and all marketing communication, we can work on making the most out of digital “memberships.” The base membership can be what’s described above: simple full access to all news content. A higher-priced membership can be that plus other benefits: discounts to physical NYT-sponsored events; free participation in online events or webinars or Google Hangouts with newsmakers and Times journalists; complementary memberships in a NYTimes.com wine club; etc.

As more newspapers have copied the NYTimes.com payment model on their own websites, we’ve seen a wave of coverage about this sea change. And too often, the word “paywall” gets bandied about and published in news articles. That drives me nuts, because it’s not doing newspaper websites any good.

I’ve written before that for news websites and their supplementary mobile apps, a “membership model” is the best way to go. I’d add that a “freemium” approach is inherent in the membership model (or should be). I hope that the industry might take a look again at this model for getting online and mobile-device users to pay something, and thus get newspapers away from being so dependent on online advertising revenues.

The reality is this: NYTimes.com and any other news site that copies its user-payment model will have a large group of loyal free users (i.e., “non-members”) and a smaller group of paying users (“members”). We media geeks can look at this and understand that’s it’s an application of the “freemium” model. Consumers of news can recognize that their choice is to be a (paying) member or a non-member.

That sounds so much more amenable than “hitting the paywall.”

I’ll probably open myself up to charges of being “ageist,” but here goes…

Working at a university journalism program (University of Colorado Boulder), I’ve come to the conclusion that the next generation of journalists will be better capitalists than older journalists. Because what I’m seeing on this campus, and I’m sure it’s similar at other university journalism programs, is a growing number of students who are interested in business-model innovation for news. No, certainly not a majority, but enough to feel some optimism.

More new journalism graduates will want to build new news businesses, because they’ve grown up to see lone bloggers starting on a shoestring build sizable media enterprises

That’s logical, since many journalism students (but not all, in my experience!) recognize that the old news institutions that try to cling to their old business models are crumbling, and they understand that to forge a career in journalism they will need to come up with new ways for news entities to be profitable, or at least sustainable — whether they go to work for an existing news organization or create a new digital news enterprise from scratch using today’s and tomorrow’s inexpensive or free digital publishing tools.

At the Digital News Test Kitchen, I’m working with two graduate students this semester who have business-model projects and research under way: one focusing on collegiate news media, the other on niche (music/entertainment) news media. One Journalism master’s student just asked me for a recommendation letter to support her application to CU’s MBA program, so she can work on dual master’s degrees while she’s here in Boulder. (That’s fantastic; I only wish that another 10 students would announce similar intentions.) A journalism student and Test Kitchen researcher who received his master’s degree in December now works for a national non-profit news service based in Boulder, serving as a digital-media and business-model strategist.

Looking elsewhere, we’ve seen a growing number of entrepreneurial journalism programs, like the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism, run by Jeff Jarvis at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism; the Missouri School of Journalism’s interdisciplinary Entrepreneurial Journalism program; and at Arizona State, the Cronkite School’s Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship.

At many journalism schools and departments that lack that kind of commitment and devotion of resources, entrepreneurial journalism courses at least have been added. That’s the case at CU-Boulder, with a course called “Adventures in Entrepreneurial Journalism,” which has been co-taught by faculty from Journalism and the Business School’s Deming Center for Entrepreneurship.

I have to believe that today’s crop of journalism graduates will embark into the world of news (those that choose to work in journalism) devoid of the attitudes that were instilled in my generation of journalism graduates: that editorial and the business sides of news should be separated by a wall, lest the latter contaminate the ethics of the former. I think that more new graduates will want to build new journalism businesses, because they’ve grown up to see lone bloggers starting on a shoestring build sizable media enterprises (TalkingPointsMemo, PaidContent, the Drudge Report, etc.). And they’ve been exposed to the notions that entrepreneurship and journalism now do mix; you don’t have to start with a big pile of money to start a media enterprise; and it is ethically possible to seek both truth and cash.

Can older journalists who’ve crossed from print and broadcast into digital become successful capitalists? Of course there are the exceptions, but I’m less optimistic about my age peers than about the students I encounter daily. For every Nick Denton (a British former newspaper journalist who built the Gawker empire and is every bit the successful capitalist) there are probably a hundred former old-media journalists scraping by with their own news websites covering their communities and still doing the work they love, but not having much of a chance that their small media businesses will grow beyond small.

That’s not to denigrate smaller online news entities that have emerged and are filling the holes left by the many layoffs of journalists from old-media organizations. We might call those local news websites (the ones that are for-profit) capitalism with a small “c”; they can serve their communities well, create some but not large numbers of new jobs for journalists, and give their founders a non-extravagant earnings level.

But my suspicion and my prediction is that it will be the next generation that will include journalism entrepreneurs who, for the lucky ones, will create journalism-based enterprises that grow to be represent Capitalism, with a capital “C.”

Next month’s Carnival: Hosted by me, Digital News Test Kitchen

I’ve been wanting to host a Carnival of Journalism, and head organizer David Cohn has agreed to let me do it for February 2012. So watch for the announcement soon of next month’s question, hosted by the Digital News Test Kitchen at CU-Boulder and me.

If you are a journalist, what would be the best present from programmers and developers that Santa Claus could leave under your Christmas tree?

I’ll overlook the pro-Christian slant (hey, what about under the FSM tree?!) and play the game.

What I’d like to receive is a written contract from some developers and technologist friends committing to spending a year of their time working on projects that are purely related to the betterment (or perhaps resurrection is a better word) of journalism and informing communities, utilizing the latest in technology developments and know-how.

Not to be too restrictive, they can work with me, my colleagues and students in the Journalism program at CU-Boulder, and/or journalists of all kinds in a variety of areas: New crowd-funding systems for news. … New forms of and platforms for crowd-sourcing. … New forms of storytelling that better engage news consumers, and that support making money from readers or users. … New algorithms to identify quality and credibility in news content, and filter out the best stuff (not just the most popular). … New systems to not only entice online and mobile users to pay for news and/or news-related services, but also make it easy and frictionless to make payments. (Could you build a Spotify for news, please?) … New algorithms to better mine the social-media stream (or more accurately, raging torrent of a river) for news which can be personalized to individual readers’ locations and/or interests. … Well, I could go on and on, but I’ll spare you.

The point is, developers, programmers, and technologists are in high demand. On my campus, our Computer Science Department is hammered with requests for partnerships and collaborations not just from Journalism, but from all manner of disciplines. If I could get a half dozen CS students to work with the Digital News Test Kitchen for a year, I’d be in heaven.

Out in the “real world,” technologists seem to have better things to do than concentrate on altruistic technology projects that serve to better inform communities or help clueless news executives adapt to the digital age. Where’s the potential big payout in that, after all? The promise of big money is everywhere except in the news industry, it would seem. Venture capitalists don’t want to invest in news ventures, for the most part, so why should individuals with in-high-demand technology skills work within a field where money is more likely to come from philanthropists and foundations than VCs?

Yet I know that there are some technologists who “get it” — who understand that journalism is in crisis; that the deterioration in quality journalism is immensely corrosive of our democracy; and that solutions for improving the sorry state of today’s journalism will require the expertise and effort of technologists working with journalists. I meet some such people at our local Hack/Hackers Colorado meetings. I read about them being part of the Knight Mozilla News Technology Partnership.

There just aren’t enough of them to go around. Certainly there aren’t enough technologists willing to pitch in their expertise to help journalists figure out how to get out of the mess we’re in.

So I’d like Santa, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or whoever puts stuff under my holiday tree to find a bunch of talented technologists looking for a challenge like leveraging emerging technology to reinvent a floundering industry which just happens to be vital to the future functioning of our democracy. Maybe they can consider it akin to serving in the Peace Corps for a year; they’ll do something important and good for society, before returning to the work where the money is.

Alas, I don’t want the print edition! I’d prefer to receive only the iPad edition and reduce my carbon footprint a bit by causing one less copy of the magazine to be printed, shipped around by trucks, and so on. Also, I prefer reading on my iPad over print magazines, the latter which tend to get lost in piles of paper and books around the house. But for the $12-a-year renewal offer, I have to get the print edition.

Sure, I could opt for paying for just the digital-tablet edition with no print delivery, but that would cost me $19.99 a year. (That also happens to be the price advertised for new subscribers on the Wired website for print edition and tablet subscription. The site doesn’t offer tablet-only for that price, as far as I can tell; you can pay $19.99 a year and avoid the print edition by purchasing a digital edition via the iPad app.)

If I was truly committed to avoiding the extra resources consumed and pollution created by taking the print edition, I could of course just pay the extra $8 a year. It’s not much, right? I considered that, but I’m on a meager university salary and my wife is a public-school teacher, and in this economy we’ve had to watch expenses and cut back on some things (bye-bye, exorbitant cable-TV bill!), so if I have a chance to save money, I do. (I’ll donate my printed Wired magazines to my wife’s school library.)

Besides, what logic is there to charge subscribers more for getting less (i.e., digital-only subscription), and charging more for subscribers who want to do the right thing environmentally? It’s stupid.

Well, it’s not stupid from the publisher’s standpoint, of course. Wired and its parent company want me and others to continue to take the print edition, whether we want it or not, because those colorful print ads that fill up the magazine bring in lots of money. It won’t do to encourage or support subscribers giving up print in favor of digital only, because the print ads would then bring in less money.

I get that. But it pisses me off that in this media transition that we find ourselves in, print publishers resort to discouraging the digital transition and encouraging subscribers to continue receiving a product that consumes physical resources (trees) and pollutes the environment (trucks and delivery).

It’s not just Wired. Making the cheapest option for newspaper and magazine subscriptions be print + digital is a current major trend in media business models.

In another few years, perhaps we’ll be past such stupidity (I mean in an environmental sense, not a business one). For now, all I or any magazine or newspaper subscriber who wants a publisher’s product and are caught in such a situation can do is gripe, or be altruistic and pay more.

Since my old columns (15 years worth!) are no longer available at EditorandPublisher.com (speaking of Fail!), I’ll link to a version of the column that I have on this, my personal website:

An Important Lesson About Grassroots Media

Harking back to a failure from 2007 does not imply that there aren’t other Fails I could write about and share lessons learned. But those will have to wait.

I’m looking forward to reading about others’ failures (but more importantly, what can be learned from them).

Fail forward!

What do you think of the NYT paywall? Tell Columbia researchers!

Columbia University researchers Shahzeem Attari and Jonathan Cook are conducting a survey on attitudes about and intentions of using (or not) the new New York Times metered paywall. Take the survey here and help them get a good number of responses so that the results are meaningful. (They’ll also appreciate it if you share the link further.)

Can NYT lower the price after starting so high?

I’m sticking to my criticisms as expressed in my last blog post about the NYT paywall. One thing that absolutely confuses me is why Times executives would choose to begin the program at such a high price for digital access ($15 per 4 weeks for web + iPhone/smartphone app; $20 per 4 weeks for web + iPad/tablet app; and $35 per 4 weeks for web + iPhone/smartphone app + iPad/tablet app). Starting high will make it awfully difficult to lower the prices to levels that will work for more than the few NYT supporters willing to help out the company.

Last week, NYT’s David Carr wrote a defense of the program and pricing, and reading through the user comments is telling. Lots of commenters said that they would be willing to pay $4.99 a month; that number appeared often. Indeed, many indicated they’d sign up in a heartbeat for a digital plan (no print edition) that allowed access to NYT content on any device (PC, laptop, smartphone, tablet) at that price. But the vast majority in that comment stream balked at the Times’ high asking price. They’ll go elsewhere for quality free news online, or work around the paywall limits, which is pretty easy to do.

Let’s imagine that this is an accurate reading of public reaction to the Times’ pricing, and that NYT executives wake up to realize that $4.99 is the monthly price that will bring in the greatest success all-around, in terms of dollars incoming and number of paying subscribers. The people already paying the exorbitant rate will all have to get refunds based on the new rate, I guess — or feel like dummies for paying so much in the first place.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to start with a (pretty standard-model) charter rate that was very low, then raise rates later? Odd.

‘We need this to survive!’ … zzzzz

Catching up on reading after my vacation, I spotted David Winer’s March 17 piece, “Comments on NYT paywall announcement,” and he makes a strong point that I’m 100% in agreement on: The Times’ pitch for people to begin paying for news online is that “We need this to survive.” … Fail!

So much better, Winer wrote (and again, 100% concurrence here), would be an offering of value to consumers. “Wouldn’t it have been wise to, at this juncture, offer something to sweeten the deal. Something truly exciting and new that you get when you pay the money. Something that makes your palms sweat and your heart beat faster?”

This supports my notion that premium memberships are a smarter idea for most news companies that want to bring in more revenue online. Currently, the Times is asking for people to pay for something that they’ve received free online for many years; that’s a difficult sale, when other quality news providers continue to be free. To compound it, the Times offers nothing new to “sweeten the deal.” … Fail.

False charge: I say news should be free

My last blog item got tweeted and shared quite a bit, and I spotted some pushback like this tweet: “NYTimes’ new pay model: They blew it!, or Why I want to bitch about paying for stuff on the internet (Via @steveouting)”

I need to push back on that one. In the case of NYT, I do think they can succeed by charging. As explained in my last post, I believe that a larger success will come from asking a much, much lower monthly fee; I suggested 99 cents for web-only full access to NYT content, and $1.99 for all-device access. As noted above, David Carr’s commenters indicate that $4.99 a month might be a price point that fills the NYT Co.’s bank account nicely.

No, I’m not bitching about paying for stuff on the Internet. I’m criticizing a pricing model that reflects an old-media view of doing business on the Internet and fails to address the realities of the Internet (one of them being that under-30ies are extremely unlikely to pay for NYT content online, so the debut price structure completely writes off younger readers; how smart is that?). If NYT execs followed my advice on the 99-cent/$1.99 pricing, they might still have a chance at the younger audience. Apparently they don’t care, which I find appalling. I guess the younger crowd can continue getting their news from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Oh, and Arianna Huffington.

Also, a high rate charged by ONE news provider damages the rest of the industry. If I as a typical consumer decide I love the Times so much that I’ll fork over $15, $20, or $35 every 4 weeks for access, I am extremely unlikely to add any other paid news sources that also demand payment, including my local newspaper website, should it charge. The more general-interest news sites that charge for access to non-premium content, the amount any one can attract will dwindle over time. There are too many quality news sources available online for site-specific charging to work over the long term among news websites.

Back to the premium-membership model: I think that for general-interest newspapers that are NOT the New York Times, free general-news content and a fee for premium “stuff” is the strongest option. What that stuff is I’ll address at a later date, after some research by a few of us at CU-Boulder is completed or at least further along.

Thanks, Lincoln, for the free NYT subscription

Finally, here’s another NYT-paywall development that has me scratching my head. Lincoln (the car brand) sent out e-mails to (I’m assuming) frequent-visiting NYTimes.com registered users, including me, offering a free NYT web + iPhone/smartphone account for the remainder of 2011. Yes, I accepted the offer; presumably I’ll be getting e-mails from Lincoln marketing a car I’ll never buy.

I don’t grok the logic of this, other than that Lincoln probably waved some nice cash in front of the Times. For those who pay $15/$20/$35 per 4 weeks, won’t they feel like chumps if they didn’t receive this offer and learn about it?

I don’t know NYT execs’ logic on this; perhaps they’ll let me know. Perhaps the e-mail went out to long-time registered NYTimes.com users. If that was the case, that would be a group of people long used to free access and difficult to transition into paying a high monthly fee. So this offer could be a way to ease them toward paying later on. … Perhaps the e-mail offers only went to older registered users — the target market for a brand like Lincoln. Though the problem with that is that older NYT readers are the most likely to pay a high monthly NYT subscription fee! … What’s your analysis of this move?

I’m disappointed. This is really a bad move that shows how Times management thinking remains stuck in the past. (Or perhaps it’s classic “decision by committee” dysfunction.)

First, the details:

• Home subscribers (to print edition) get full access to NYT digital content across all platforms, no limitations: website, tablet access, smartphone access. No extra charge.
• Non-print subscribers:
  • Using website: 20 free articles per month on NYTimes.com before hitting the paywall. Articles reached via an inbound link (blog, Twitter, Facebook, search, etc.) will not be counted against the 20.
  • Using NYT smartphone or tablet app: “Top News” sections free; accessing anything else will hit the paywall.
  • Digital subscription package #1: $15 every 4 weeks. Full access to website and smartphone app.
  • Digital subscription package #2: $20 every 4 weeks. Full access to website and tablet app.
  • Digital subscription package #3: $35 every 4 weeks. Full access to website, smartphone app, and tablet app.

Wow, there are so many flaws in that strategy. Let me count them:

1. 20 articles a month free, or 1 article every weekday for the 4-week subscription period. This means that nearly everyone who visits NYTimes.com regularly and directly will hit the paywall — and the majority will turn away. What this will do is ensure that an increasing amount of NYTimes.com traffic will come via social-media links and search. The NYT homepage will become much less of a draw to many people. …
   I would have set this much higher if the monthly fee had to be as high as it is. Many casual users who will not pay will hit the paywall with the announced plan; it would have been better to limit paywall exposure to only NYT’s most-frequent web users; i.e., those most likely to pay.
    

2. Pricing is absurdly high. Yes, the New York Times is a great news organization producing the best journalism in the world. But faced with those fees when there are so many other quality news websites a click away, a small percentage of NYTimes.com visitors will pay. …
   My suggestion for smarter pricing: 99 cents every 4 weeks using the 20-free-articles-per-month model. $1.99 per 4 weeks for full website access plus smartphone AND tablet app full access. Here’s why: NYT has not learned from the Apple experience. Apparently, NYT executives would rather have a small number of elite digital readers pay a high monthly fee than millions of people paying iTunes- or App Store-like fees. What the high price point will do — because of the low limit on monthly free articles — is dramatically diminish the Times’ importance as a global news organization, ceding its longtime lead to other credible news organizations that choose not to charge online. A 99-cent price point would be a “no-brainer” for many people who like the NYT brand, just as paying 99 cents for a song on iTunes or an iPhone/iPad app is an easy impulse buy: “Why the hell not?! It’s only 99 cents!”
    

3. Separate fees for smartphone and tablet app access goes against the trends in media. Increasingly, as consumers add more gadgets capable of consuming news, more people will be switching between viewing news on a laptop or PC, smartphone, and tablet. For that privilege, the Times wants $35 per 4 weeks. To separate pricing for smartphone and tablet apps flies in the face of where media consumption is heading. And that price will attract only a small, affluent customer base. $35 per 4 weeks for ONE NEWS SOURCE online? That is completely off the charts for non-niche news. …
   My solution is simple: one price across all platforms, to make it most convenient for today’s early adopters and tomorrow’s mainstream news audience. See my $1.99 suggestion above.
    

4. The high digital price point is obviously designed to retain high-paying print subscribers and extend the life of the print newspaper. After all, if the Times followed my low-pricing recommendation for digital, many print subscribers would be inclined to dump their expensive print home-delivery subscriptions. Fine, I understand that, but it’s a backward-looking strategy that hobbles the potential success of the digital side. I contend that no news organization — even the New York Times — can succeed long term when it makes decisions based on looking over its shoulder at the dying legacy product.
    

5. Finally, the Times overlooked offering, ALSO, a higher-priced “Times Premium” membership. Charging 99 cents or $1.99 per 4 weeks is probably the most they can get the majority of people to pay for their news alone. But NYT could also offer a higher-priced premium membership that included not only full access on web, tablets, and smartphones, but also other valuable benefits that make it worth paying more. (I won’t get into that now. It’s another blog post, and I’m running a research project at the University of Colorado Boulder looking at effective models for news premium memberships — so more on that another time.)

I hope someone from NY Times management will respond to my criticisms. If they do, I expect that the justification for this announced pricing model will be that they can’t do harm to the newspaper product. I guess that’s the way it is. But in my view, this over-priced metered-paywall mistaken strategy puts the “Gray Lady” a step closer to the grave rather than getting a chance at a new life.

Once again, the high grades go to the “new” digital media players. I’ll give the Times a “D.” (That at least gives me a tiny fudge factor in case the Times proves me wrong. But I really doubt it.)

I wish… for Murdoch to fail, quickly

I wish… for NYTimes.com’s “metered” paywall to flounder

I wish… news publishers will wake up to the membership model, and learn to SELL

I wish… that Wikileaks and mainstream news providers learn to get along

I wish… that many newspaper executives will retire

I wish… that the cost of developing mobile apps will fall greatly

I wish… that non-profit investigative news organizations have a GREAT year

 
What are your media wishes for 2011?