The New York Times has seen traffic go up on certain sections of its site since it dropped the paywall. Which is good.
However, this only matters if those pageviews are translating into revenue somehow…
However, this only matters if those pageviews are translating into revenue somehow…
October 18, 2007 11:08 PM | Reply
Are you talking short-term or long-term, Adam? Do you doubt that either is happening or will happen?
It also matters as a big move in a much larger movement towards openness and as a recognition of links as the currency of the web.
October 18, 2007 11:35 PM | Reply
Quite honestly, both. If there isn't enough short-term revenue to at least cushion the horrible bleeding out of offline revenue that most publishing businesses are seeing, there won't be a long term…
Don't get me wrong - I'm not arguing for the retention of pay walls. I'm just suggesting that traffic in itself is not actually very useful to a commercial publishing organisation unless in comes hand-in-hand with revenue. And that's not guaranteed.
I'm still not convinced that the current online variation of the old school publishing model of largely-ad supported journalism is actually sustainable in anything like its current form in the long term, and wonder if the Times is swapping one dead end for another.