NYT Paywall Ready, Frank Rich Leaving

[Thailandnotes]

Rumor or not?

"In light of yesterday's announcement that three-decade Times veteran Frank Rich will be abandoning ship to write for his old friend Adam Moss at New York, one fellow journalist even suggested that Rich was "escaping the coming paywall/wasteland at NYT, like an East German jumping the Berlin Wall."

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runnin...the_new_yo.php

[dcarrigg]

Re: NYT Paywall Ready, Frank Rich Leaving

Rumor or not?

"In light of yesterday's announcement that three-decade Times veteran Frank Rich will be abandoning ship to write for his old friend Adam Moss at New York, one fellow journalist even suggested that Rich was "escaping the coming paywall/wasteland at NYT, like an East German jumping the Berlin Wall."

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runnin...the_new_yo.php

I think that the paywall will be a disaster. The NYT simply syndicates too much content for it to be effective. Can't read it through the paywall at nytimes.com? How about at Boston.com, where much of the same material exists?

If I had to do a rough, back-of-the-envelope calculation, my guess would be that in the short term, their monthly unique views on the website will drop from 32M to about 3 or 4M (even if a couple of pages are free at first, people will catch on quickly and not click on the links). This would likely mean that the $100M/yr in online ad sales would drop to $10M (maybe further), and I'd expect they'll get a max of $60M in subscription fees (the rest provided for free to old paper subscribers).

Meanwhile, and over time, they become a less relevant news source. I suspect that readership among youth will drop, especially with youth that tend to move a lot (cell phones and e-mail go with you).

This is not to say that they won't find a way to make it work, but I wouldn't bet on it.