All Posts Tagged With: "paywalls"

I think it’s safe to say that what Walter Isaacson and Steven Brill started — a wave of newspaper websites putting up “metered paywalls” where there’s a subscription or membership fee required for site visitors who want to read more than X number of articles per month — has taken hold in a big way.

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?

The word “paywall” as applied to news websites sucks. It’s a negative word. If a consumer hears that a favorite news site is putting up a “paywall,” the response is highly likely to be: avoid!

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.”

Monday marks the rollout of NYTimes.com’s “metered paywall,” which I wrote about (and criticized) here last week (before going on vacation for a week). Here are a few quick developments and additional thoughts about what is an important milestone in the digital-news space:

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?

If any non-niche, general-interest news organization could successfully pull off a digital “metered paywall” model, I thought it would be the New York Times. Alas, today the Times announced its plans and pricing, beginning March 28 in the U.S. (and being tested first in Canada).

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.)

As I noted yesterday, web donation network Kachingle has launched a good-natured guerrilla marketing campaign to allow Kachingle users to financially support any of NYTimes.com’s 50-plus bloggers. The theme is “Stop the Paywall!” (as in, NYTimes.com’s upcoming “metered paywall,” set to debut in early 2011) … “Keep the NYT Blogs you love in the open web.”

And as I predicted yesterday, Times executives have decided to put their lawyers on the case and send a cease and desist order to Kachingle founder Cynthia Typaldos and CEO Fred Dewey. So, rather than let an innovative marketing campaign by a tiny company run its course, Times executives are doing Kachingle a potentially big favor by flexing their legal muscles.

If this gets much press/Twitter/blogosphere attention, then Kachingle will benefit from a big boost in visibility. (Perhaps NYTimes.com could run a news story about the dispute!)

Typaldos today blogged about her encounter yesterday with Times executives: “But we love you The New York Times. My conversation with Mr. Digital and Mr. Legal and Mr. Paywall.” In her blog item, she recounted the discussion and reported that she would be receiving a letter soon:

“They said they were going to send us a legal document via FedEx called a ‘cease and desist’ order. I have never received one of these before so it’s going to be quite exciting. As soon as it arrives I will scan it and post.”

It doesn’t sound like Typaldos intends to back down:

“I told the three NYTimes executives that we have the same goal — saving the NYTimes Blogs from obscurity. Finding a new business model for news. At Kachingle we passionately believe that paywalls are truly bad … they cut off information from the open web, they dampen social discourse, they exclude people all over the world who cannot afford to be nickel-and-dimed-and-quartered-and-dollared for quality content. We believe paywalls are the enemy of democracy. We believe in our mission, and we will not back down.

While I can’t imagine it’s fun to be threatened by a huge media company’s lawyers (and there are financial risks in fighting back, of course), there’s clearly potential for an upside. I’m reminded of a former business partner (our company died in a bit less than two years from launch) who, when traffic to our websites failed to grow sufficiently fast enough, bemoaned that we needed something that would make a bigger splash. Getting sued by a big media or other company and the accompanying publicity and controversy would certainly do the trick, he said. I don’t believe he was joking. (He was a veteran of several previous Internet start-ups, and now is a partner at one that’s doing very well.)

I’ll keep watch on what happens next and report any interesting developments.

(Disclaimer: I have written about Kachingle in the past as a former columnist, and in this blog; I’ve also done a small amount of consulting for the company.)

This is an interesting case of what I guess would be termed “guerrilla marketing.” Kachingle, an online user-donation network that aims to financially support many websites and blogs, has begun a campaign to “STOP THE PAYWALL” at NYTimes.com.

First, some quick background:

• NYTimes.com has announced that it will put up a “metered paywall” on the site in early 2011. That means that site visitors after viewing an as yet unspecified number of stories in a month will be asked to pay to subscribe to the site or otherwise pay to access more Times content. It is likely that web users referred via links on Google, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc. will not be counted against the monthly free allotment. (In other words, it’s a porous paywall, unlike the “hard” paywall that’s on Rupert Murdoch The Times (UK) website; that paywall allows no free content, and only paying customers can see beyond the headlines.)

Kachingle’s founders don’t believe in paywalls for general news websites, and they think that they have a better idea: Get readers of news across many sites and blogs to band together, pay $5 a month to Kachingle, then have Kachingle distribute that money based on individual users’ tracked visits to sites and blogs that they like (and that display Kachingle “medallions”).

The Kachingle guerrilla marketing campaign has specifically targeted the 50-plus blogs published on NYTimes.com, by allowing Kachingle’s paying member (I’m one) to “Kachingle” or support any of those blogs — without NYTimes.com’s cooperation. (I regularly read some of the NYT blogs and have Kachingled the ones I like. So, when I visit those blogs from now on, some of my $5 a month will start going to NYTimes.com bloggers — that is, if they choose to sign up to collect it.)

Since the Times doesn’t appear to want to do business with Kachingle or support its donation scheme, Kachingle founder Cynthia Typaldos and CEO Fred Dewey had their staff create browser plug-ins for Firefox and Chrome that allow a Kachingle member to support the NYTimes.com blogs. With the plug-in installed, when you visit one of the blogs, a thin Kachingle medallion banner appears above the page, pushing down the rest of the NYTimes.com page. That’s how you can “Kachingle” a specific NYTimes.com blogger. … NYTimes.com visitors who do not install the Kachingle browser plug-in will not see the medallions.

There’s also an automatically updating “Leader Board” that shows which NYT blogs are getting the most Kachinglers (i.e., financial supporters). As I write this, Paul Krugman’s blog is leading the Bits Blog and David Pogue’s Posts blog. The numbers aren’t much, but the campaign was launched only last night, and paying Kachingle members and some journalists and bloggers were notified today.

We’ll have to wait and see what the reaction is from NYTimes.com executives. As I see it, they can ignore this innovative but perhaps annoying (to NYT) ploy by a small Internet donation start-up, and it will either catch on with web users who think it’s a good idea, or die quickly. Or the Times execs can make a stink and try to force Kachingle to halt the campaign.

My experience with big media companies is that they often can’t help themselves from the latter approach: Call in the lawyers and send out the cease-and-desist orders! That would not be wise, since it will turn Kachingle’s guerrilla marketing ploy into a David-vs.-Goliath saga that could get lots of attention in the blogosphere and on Twitter.

Hey, what better way for a small business struggling to catch on with the public than to get a boost by being threatened or sued by New York Times lawyers! And it will raise more questions about the NYTimes.com paywall strategy.

I should learn more later, so we’ll see where this goes. In any event, it looks like fun.

(Disclaimer: I have written about Kachingle in the past as a former columnist, and in this blog; I’ve also done a small amount of consulting for the company.)

In my last blog post, I ranted about Rupert Murdoch’s “hard paywall” on The Times and Sunday Times websites, suggesting that his company’s newspaper division needs to think in shades of gray when it comes to website paywall models, because the extreme black-vs.-white approach being taken is likely to fail.

I received the following comment, which makes me think that there may be others who misunderstand my position on news paywalls and paying for news content. (I’m answering as a separate blog item, rather than have it be less visible in the comments.)

“Dear Steve Outing: I know how fiercely against paying for journalism you are, but please do explain what is so brilliant about the Guardian’s strategy. As far as I understand they just continue the FREE strategy and at the same time they have deep economic problems because it is expensive producing such high quality as the Guardian does? –Cheers, Pernille”

Thanks for taking the time to comment, Pernille, but you mischaracterize my position. I am not against online users paying for journalism. Rather, I don’t believe that enough people will pay for general-interest news online from a single news brand, like The Times, to pay for a well-staffed newsroom, except in certain non-competitive markets. Here’s why:

1. In the case of The Times, that UK national newspaper has multiple serious direct competitors, each of which continues to offer its news content on the Web free. TheTimes.co.uk likely will convince some of those loyal to its historic brand to pay up online, but the overall effect will be to turn a large chunk of its Internet audience over to the other UK newspaper and other news sites. The influence of The Times will wane.
2. Murdoch makes the mistake of believing that The Times’ news content is superior to its news competitors, thus lots of people will decide to starting paying him online. He may not believe that in relation to competing newspapers (The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent…), but rather is hoping that they’ll see him leap first and follow along for the ride and they’ll all make boatloads of cash. But there’s a problem…
3. On the Internet, no one knows you’re a newspaper! (Historical reference: that old New Yorker cartoon with two dogs at a computer, “On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog!”) By that I mean, with a news website, there’s often not much difference between a broadcaster’s news site (say, BBC.co.uk) and a newspaper site (like TheTimes.co.uk). All the major news providers now trade in text, audio, multimedia, and video. I don’t for a second believe that the TV news folks, steeped in models that don’t charge subscription fees, will follow Murdoch into paywall-land, even if the UK newspapers do (again, unlikely). A Murdochian walling off of all newspaper content online would just boost broadcast news entities while sinking the newspapers.
4. The non-newspaper, non-broadcast news media segment is growing fast, and if The Times and other legacy news brands all marched to Murdoch’s orders, then the up-and-coming news providers would say, “Thanks a lot, guys,” and build up their news quality, staffing, audience, and advertisers. Oh, and who’s running these fledgling Web and mobile news outfits? Lots of laid-off newspaper journalists, in large part. Perhaps Murdoch believes that journalists who don’t work for legacy media still work in their pajamas and don’t do any original reporting.

So, Pernille, I simply call foul on newspaper publishers who think that because they say that news is expensive to produce (yes, it is), that people must pay to view it online. Um, no, most won’t pay when the free alternative is one click away.

I do, however, support the idea of Internet users paying for news and news-related services. (An example of the latter would be finely tuned personalized news offered with synchronization across multiple devices.) I believe that premium content and premium services can carry a price tag, and if the offering is good enough and well targeted, then people will pay. The way to accomplish this, I believe, is through premium memberships (non-mandatory), or “member zones,” as my friends who recently exited MediaNews Group call them. Another apt descriptor is “freemium,” since the model involves free news content (like the stuff that’s a click away) and paid premium content and services. Simple.

As for The Guardian’s free-syndication strategy: Indeed, it is brilliant — and counterintuitive to those still wedded to old notions of news publishing. Here’s why:

1. By allowing full-content publication of Guardian words, images, and more, the news company is creating a global network. For now, anyone running WordPress can post full Guardian articles rather than just link to the Guardian website, or rather than rewrite Guardian stories in condensed form (a la HuffingtonPost.com or DailyBeast.com) and include a link back to The Guardian site.
2. The Guardian gets to sell ads on this “global network” and keep the revenue that thus comes from websites and blogs that it has a simple, low-maintenance relationship with. The trick will be to get effective targeting of ads in place, so that readers of Guardian news on an Australian news site aren’t shown ads for London auto dealers.
3. The incentive for blogs and many other websites to publish full Guardian content is not, I’d say, assured. But in theory it is a great idea, because other Web publishers who can get extra audience traffic by posting Guardian stuff can earn ad money off those pages — i.e., from ads on those pages other than the embedded Guardian advertising.
4. Sure, we’ll have to see how this plays out. But what The Guardian is doing is saying that instead of making our money solely from within our walled garden (as Murdoch is doing with The Times online paywall), we want to turn on a bunch of other revenue spigots that are outside of our garden.

It’s pretty simple, really, yet seemingly so difficult for the newspaper industry to grasp. The secret is to stop trying to chase after and punish those who “steal” your news content, and instead figure out how to make the inevitable into a profit center and brand enhancer. You know, the old “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade” approach to life, and business.

Within reports of MediaNews Group about to institute a metered paywall at a couple of its newspapers by May is something disturbing. This excerpt is from a Bloomberg report about the newspaper chain’s plans:

“The newspapers, in York, Pennsylvania, and Chico, California, will give users free access to as many as 25 ‘premium’ articles monthly, after which they’ll have to pay an undetermined fee unless they subscribe to the print newspapers, said MediaNews President Joseph Lodovic. Premium content may include certain columns and investigative reporting, he said.

“’Most of our content will remain free,’ Lodovic said yesterday in an e-mail. ‘Once subscribed, the reader will have access to all premium across MediaNews Group.’”

I’ll buy the idea of calling investigative reporting “premium content”; it’s the most important journalism produced by most newspaper companies. But I take issue with adding “paid online” to that description.

So the Chico Enterprise-Record publishes a blockbuster investigative series uncovering, say, that private contractors are dumping waste into the lake that supplies most of the city’s water while city officials look the other way because they’ve been bribed. That’s a story you would want every person in Chico, and the state for that matter, to read.

But, no, you’ll have to pay for that if you’ve gone over your free web article quota.

I get it. MediaNews Group needs the money, would like more people to go back to paying for print editions, and is putting an online price tag on its best, “premium” content.

Really, I have no issue with news organizations charging for premium content or services, if they can figure out what they’ve got that’s not available elsewhere for free, a couple mouse-clicks away (which is a big if).

Unfortunately, lumping investigative journalism into the paywalled content pile is against the interests of the newspaper’s community.

How about if newspaper publishers decide to go with web paywalls (not my idea of a good strategy), they at least exempt investigative journalism in the interests of an informed citizenry?

So the long-awaited (well, at least by many of us media geeks) decision by NYTimes.com has been announced. And the winner is:

THE METERED PAYWALL!

According to the Times’ own report, by Richard Perez-Pena:

“Starting in early 2011, visitors to NYTimes.com will get a certain number of articles free every month before being asked to pay a flat fee for unlimited access. Subscribers to the newspaper’s print edition will receive full access to the site.”

That doesn’t sound like the more nuanced approach to a metered paywall that I espoused on this blog yesterday. Then again, if it won’t be implemented till 2011 (!), there’s still time to create a system that’s less black-and-white and makes more sense.

Until I get a chance to quiz one of the Times execs on this decision, I’ll withhold judgment. Maybe it’s not as bad as it looks (to me) on the surface.

But there’s one quote in Perez-Pena’s piece that drives me up the wall. It’s from Janet Robinson, New York Times Co. president and CEO:

“There’s no prize for getting it quick. There’s more of a prize for getting it right.”

Sounds reasonable, you say? NO. … NYT has been studying this issue for a year; now it will take another year before finalizing and implementing the metered paywall. This is yet another demonstration of the newspaper industry’s conservative nature which has served it so poorly over the last decade and a half (since the first web browser was unleashed on the world).

Let’s see … one year. In the Internet age, the change that will likely occur on the technology scene — which will impact all media publishers profoundly — is probably going to be more than in what we saw in the entire decade or the 1970s or 1980s.

A big theme for 2010 in media will be mobile smart-phones and portable digital tablets; newspaper companies better have that figured out soon. (Perhaps NY Times Digital, with its large technology development staff, is well on its way.) But the Times is still mucking around with the details of its website metered-paywall decision and needs another year? Oy!

There are many things killing off the newspaper industry, and this is one of them. You’ve got to move faster, folks.

“New York Times Ready to Charge Online Readers,” said NYMag.com’s Daily Intel in a Sunday report.

I’m not sure whether to believe the story or not, but since there’s no definitive word from NYT executives yet, let’s play along and pretend this is an accurate report: NYTimes.com this spring will launch a “metered” web payment system, where readers can sample X number of free articles before being asked to subscribe.

If that’s true and the system is as simple as that — “Dear loyal Times reader: You’ve read 10 articles for free this month; to read more, sign up for a paid subscription” — then it’s a bad decision. TechDirt minced no words with its story: “NY Times Apparently Planning To Commit Suicide Online With Paywall.”

Or go read Jeff Jarvis’ take on his BuzzMachine blog, where he states the obvious problem with the metered approach to web news content:

“They would would end up charging — and, they should fear, sending away — the readers who are worth the most while serving free those who are worth least. … Why charge your best customers? Why single them out? Why risk driving them away? The logic eludes me.”

But we’re talking about the most revered newspaper in the English-speaking world, and it’s not staffed by dummies. I would hope the Times leadership learned from the unsuccessful TimesSelect partial paid-wall experiment. The Times is a general-interest newspaper with a global reach and global influence; it would be foolish to turn away loyal online readers unwilling or unable to pay U.S. prices that aren’t realistic in some economies (e.g., India, the Middle East), not to mention invite other news organizations to take over their mantle as most influential news brand by not locking most of the world out.

I don’t know what decision NYT executives will announce, but if they go the metered paywall route, I can only hope that they get it right. While I continue to think that a voluntary membership model that gets paying members special privileges and commercial offers from advertisers is a better way to go, if metered paywall is the decision, then here’s what it should look like to have a chance of succeeding:

• Allow several free article views per day before a reader hits any kind of paywall. Ten articles per month and then a paywall, as the Financial Times’ website offers, is a non-starter for NYTimes.com and will result in unacceptable advertising losses for NYTimes.com as site traffic drops.
• This makes way more sense than the FT.com model, because for heavy users of NYTimes.com, they will see the paywall or alternative offer every day. FT.com users hit the paywall once per month at 10 articles, then most will not come back. FT.com can afford not to care, because it’s after business people who can afford to pay for FT’s specialized business and financial news coverage. It’s not after a massive audience the way NYTimes.com is (or should be).
• Give the NYTimes.com user who hits the “paywall” after, say, three or four stories in one day several options for continuing to read. Offering only the option of subscribing is, and I can’t think of a better word, dumb.
• What should the options be?
  1. Subscriptions for unfettered access, offered in various terms: monthly, 6-month, annual, lifetime, etc.
  2. A day-pass rate ($1 or $2?) for those wanting more but unwilling to commit to a subscription.
  3. Adjust the day-pass (and subscription rates) based on the country of the reader (determined by IP address). While a day pass to NYTimes.com might cost $1.50 to North American online readers, the price should be, say, the equivalent of 25 cents for readers in India where the standard wage is far less than in the U.S.
  4. Offer an alternative to paying for a day-pass: View a 30-second video commercial, which can’t be skipped or fast-forwarded, for a blockbuster ad or a targeted ad based on what the site knows about the reader. Or, assuming NYTimes.com has good targeting ability (possible with non-paying subscribers because the site makes everyone register), let the user take a market survey for an ad client who’s paying a premium; then give the reader a free day or week-long pass to unlimited articles.
  5. Offer the special membership I mentioned above as an option. This might cost more than a subscription, but would include extra goodies such as free or discount tickets to newsmaker events, and lucrative discount and free-offer deals from participating advertisers (e.g., two-for-one dinner or theater-ticket offers each month). The membership would also include unfettered access to the full website with no reading quotas.
  6. Offer something for those not willing to pay but who still want more. This might be a partial wall, where after viewing three NYT stories on one day, subsequent stories show only the first three or four paragraphs of a story — followed by the list of options above. I’d add even one more in this instance: a micropayment for, say, 25 cents to view the rest of the article (if it’s article No. 4 read by the user that day and they want to view the whole thing).
  7. Allow paying members of voluntary content-donation networks special access. Let’s say that I, a paying member to the Kachingle multi-website donation service, visit NYTimes.com and click its Kachingle medallion, indicating that I support NYTimes.com and some of my $5 a month paid to Kachingle gets proportioned every month to NYTimes.com based on my usage of the site. Perhaps for Kachingle member-supporters of NYTimes.com, the daily free-article limit becomes 10, or 20, rather than three, before the paywall and other options are shown.
  8. Establish some sort of convenient system for libraries and schools, so that users of public computers don’t run into annoying paywall barriers.
  9. Finally, use the paywall strategy for special events or promotions. For instance, right now the NYTimes.com metered wall could be set at three free articles, then the top offer for continued access to more full Times content for the next week is to make a $10 donation to Haiti earthquake relief, or a $5 donation for two days of full access.

In general, I’m against paywalls for general-news websites, for reasons that I and many other digital-media pundits have expressed many times over. But that’s a black-and-white view, and I think there are shades of gray that might work, as I’ve outlined above.

So … Dear Bill Keller and NYT executive team: Please don’t blow it with a restrictive metered paywall that will damage your brand’s influence and bottom line. If you’re dead set on the metered paywall model — and I still have hope that you’re not — then at least implement it intelligently.