NY Times Firewall

[lsanderson]

The Time's firewall goes up on Monday. I ustta get the paper edition, and the last time they firewalled their editorial and op-ed writers, I had access. I obviously steal borrow and link to a lot of their articles. Because I'm cheap On principles, I don't want to pay. OTOH, there's going to be severe withdrawal going on.

Comments

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

Have you been following the news about the problems with the paywall, that the NYTimes reportedly paid $40-50 million to design and code? It can be surmounted with four lines of Javascript. As the Nieman Journalism Lab article says, "It barely even qualifies as a hack."

Beside that, the paywall is porous by design. The NYTimes wants the ad revenue and Google that comes with social network traffic.

I have mixed feelings. I want journalism to survive. For that to happen, there has to be money in it. In some ways I admire NYT's sheer gutsiness in putting forth a model that gives content away for free while making others pay hundreds of dollars a year for the privilege of reading as much content as they want all in one place rather than an article at a time. It's a tricky balancing act.

Links:

Nieman Journalism Lab article.

Bloomberg article. I especially like Dan Ariely's observations near the end of the article, and not just because I've met and like the guy.

The Alternet article that's linked to everywhere.

And a good article on The Street, again, especially at the end (on page 2).

Thanks!

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

For the links. I'm currently just wailing.