Pinching the Gray Lady

Matt Welch | September 19, 2005

Today The New York Times hastened its own irrelevance by placing the work of two of its most easily replaceable genres of writer -- opinion columnists and sports bloviators -- behind a paid firewall. Apparently, that $1.8 billion annual gross profit just ain't cutting it.

Which recalls those dot-contastic days of my youth, when self-conscious "Netrepreneurs" like Michael Kinsley tried to convince us that charging money for online opinion journalism would somehow "be among the Web's great contributions to democracy," before hastily retreating from the yawning silence to whine that, "It may just have been that we were too early." The L.A. Times is still reeling from a disastrous paid-firewall experiment, and meanwhile, the one example anyone can point to of a big newspaper charging for online content and getting away with it -- The Wall Street Journal -- sends me about four "Hey Blogger!" e-mails a day hyping articles and columns it's giving away for free.

The interesting part will come not by watching how columnists like Thomas "Michael Mandelbaum" Friedman react to a world so suddenly un-flat that his Bangalore golfing buddies can no longer immediately read his metaphors, but rather what the litigious Sulzbergers will do when, inevitably, every column worth reading -- and many that are not -- will be cut and pasted whole onto other people's websites.

Comments

Jeff P.|9.19.05 @ 2:35PM|#

Most opinion columnists are already irelevant. But is there a chance I can get TV station managers to start doing editorials at the end of broadcasts again?
Sports writers have no soul to start with, so this is no great loss.

|9.19.05 @ 2:37PM|#

There is PTI, and that's all we really need.

|9.19.05 @ 2:48PM|#

The Atlantic seems to be happy behind its members login page...

theOneState|9.19.05 @ 2:51PM|#

What would happen if Tech Central Station erected a firewall?

|9.19.05 @ 2:52PM|#

"and meanwhile, the one example anyone can point to of a big newspaper charging for online content and getting away with it -- The Wall Street Journal -- sends me about four "Hey Blogger!" e-mails a day hyping articles and columns it's giving away for free."

Also, the Journal can probably be written off by many subscribers as a business expense, and many subscribers probably get it paid for by their employers. That's probably a big reason why it works for them.

While Tom Friedman can be safely written off as a columnist, I don't think the IRS would take kindly to an attempt to write off a Times Select subscription.

|9.19.05 @ 2:54PM|#

It's interesting to note that, while the WSJ is behind a firewall, their people appear in other media far more often than Times people appear to.

|9.19.05 @ 2:56PM|#

Yeah, they seem to be bucking a trend. Everywhere I look, the price of online information is shrinking. I envision a day in the near future when artists, writers and musicians are actually paying me to look and listen. Or maybe it's symptomatic of a decaying culture: the mundane simply isn't worth that much when there's so damn much of it available.

|9.19.05 @ 3:00PM|#

If the opinion-mongers are so replaceable, why is their work consistenly the most e-mailed? I can't imagine why people are so eager to share the words of Paul Krugman with their friends, but they do?

Then again, how many forwards does it take to make the "most e-mailed" list? Anybody know?

Matt Welch|9.19.05 @ 3:06PM|#

trostky -- Just because it's the most e-mailed, doesn't mean it isn't the most replaceable. People usually get the most agitated by opinionated commentary, not journalistic features. But opinionated commentary is far more easy to do & do well, since you don't have to learn the comparative rigor of good newsgathering & presentation.

The Times, though, and to its credit, pays for its op-ed columnists to fly around the globe reporting stuff, which gives them more of a leg up. It's reporting-lite people like Dowd who have the narrowest margin of replaceability.

TallDave|9.19.05 @ 3:31PM|#

Hey, what do you expect from a paper run by a guy named "Pinch" who barely got into college?

|9.19.05 @ 3:52PM|#

Considering that some people, myself included, don't even like registering for free content, I don't see the paid stuff working out so well.

I sincerely hope Reason's bloggers don't post links to or comments on pay-only material. That would be really annoying.

The Zero Boss|9.19.05 @ 3:54PM|#

I'd also speculate that Krugman, et. al. are the "most e-mailed" because of their high visibility. A blogger who writes a proper fisking of Krugman, Coulter or a similar bloviator is guaranteed some good search engine traffic, and perhaps also some momentary attention from the 400-lb. elephants like Kos and Instapundit. Gives you much more incentive to rant against Krugman than against some start-up blog with less than 50 readers to its name.

|9.19.05 @ 4:39PM|#

Want to be on the Most Emailed hot list? Be extremely partisan and employed at an old guard MSM outlet. Voila!

The Gray Lady's Shroud of Respectability plus some alphabet soup makes your frothing at the mouth partsian hackery more email-able by both sides.

raymond|9.19.05 @ 4:51PM|#

I sincerely hope Reason's bloggers don't post links to or comments on pay-only material. That would be really annoying.

Ok. I, for one, certainly won't be linking to such material.

Though we all like "free" stuff, we live in a tanstaafl world. One way or another in this information-economy, some greedy bastard is going to try to make money from information.

Shame on the publisher of the NYT. And shame on his reliance on the marketplace, which alone will decide whether the paper has made a mistake or not.

And especially, shame on that $1.8 billion gross profit.

|9.19.05 @ 6:48PM|#

Matt,

Use EBITDA next time, you'll get more street cred from the finance geeks.

|9.19.05 @ 7:22PM|#

On the whole subject of charging online for services that were once free, I still like this old cover of *Wired* (which for some obscure reason seems to have displeased some feminists...):
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.05/full.html

Matt Welch|9.19.05 @ 8:02PM|#

Varangy -- I don't know if you're a baseball stat-freak or not (here's hoping not, for your sake) ... but I feel the same about EBITDA that I do about "VORP" (Value Over Replacement Player) -- Until you get me an acronym I don't feel embarrassed about saying, I ain't using it. I think that's a pretty mature approach .... (also, I seize every opportunity to use the word "gross").

Matt Welch|9.19.05 @ 8:06PM|#

raymond -- the marketplace, which alone will decide whether the paper has made a mistake or not.

The NYT, despite being a publicly traded company, judges its own success not solely by its profits or stock price. And consumers, last time I looked, were not duty-bound to base their opinions about products on whether the company making them is being aptly rewarded by the marketplace.

|9.19.05 @ 10:37PM|#

Neither VORP nor EBITDA can hold a candle to the pension reform act known as SPJPA. Say that out loud.

|9.19.05 @ 11:51PM|#

Matt notes that the NYT makes a healthy profit. Does Reason? Does it make any money at all? If, as I suspect, the answer is no, maybe he should think twice before criticizing the Times' business ideas.

raymond|9.20.05 @ 12:40AM|#

And consumers, last time I looked, were not duty-bound to base their opinions about products on whether the company making them is being aptly rewarded by the marketplace.

By "marketplace" I meant that place - physical or cyber - where people come to sell or to buy. Anything. Not just stocks and bonds and futures.

If people are willing to pay for "the work of two of its most easily replaceable genres of writer" on the Net, then... Oh what the heck. You know how it works.

The NYT, despite being a publicly traded company, judges its own success not solely by its profits or stock price.

NYT états d'âme are irrelevant to this discussion. It's not the Missionaries of Charity charging for hand-holding sessions, after all.

(The Spectator (online) has recently gone all pay-me-pay-me. Though I enjoy the magazine, I apparently don't enjoy it enough to shell out the "less than a pound a week" it would cost me to continue reading any article I wish. So far they don't seem particularly bothered.)

I was quite surprised by your original post. It seems so antimarket. So... unReasonable.

raymond|9.20.05 @ 3:47AM|#

Tesco half-year pre-tax profits over GBP 900.

And they still charge for pasta.

Shame on them.

raymond|9.20.05 @ 6:47AM|#

900 million. sorry.

Timothy|9.20.05 @ 11:57AM|#

SPJPA is hard to say, thank [relevant deistic figure] for ERISA. That one I can pronounce. Also thanks said same relevant deistic figure that I don't work over in Corporate Trust.

Matt Welch|9.20.05 @ 4:01PM|#

I was quite surprised by your original post. It seems so antimarket.

If your long-distance provider suddenly doubled the cost of your bill, would it be "antimarket" to criticize it? When is it ideologically permissible to criticize a company in your world?

Matt notes that the NYT makes a healthy profit. Does Reason? Does it make any money at all? If, as I suspect, the answer is no, maybe he should think twice before criticizing the Times' business ideas.

Reason is published by a non-profit.

And the day I "think twice" before criticizing somebody else's business decision simply because of the financial situation of the entity that signs my paycheck, is the day I cease being useful at whatever it is that I do.

|9.20.05 @ 4:54PM|#

I think the NYT will discover that the Wall Street Journal has the better take on things: people will pay for factual content that they cannot get elsewhere, but you might just as well give away the opinion content as a form of advertising/influence-mongering.

And it is sort of odd--the NYT is giving away the work that cost the most to produce--articles by travelling reporters--while making a person pay to read what Dowd or Krugman are thinking about on a given day.

Not far removed from thinking that I can charge people to access my blog.

raymond|9.21.05 @ 1:10AM|#

If my provider doubles its rates, I'll change providers. If gas prices rise beyond what I'm willing to pay, I'll buy a bike. If the hotel down the road "price-gouges" in time of crisis, I'll rent out my guest room to a needy refugee. And if the NYT charges for content I'm not interested in, heck. I'll punish them by not reading it.

When is it ideologically permissible to criticize a company in your world?

Any time at all. But especially when the company is not maximising profits. When it's giving away product for which people are willing to pay. (I own some stock.)*

Running websites is a costly business. Some people have sites as a hobby. Others, because they have a message they want to get across. And still others, because they want to make money. Fair dues to the last.

As the Web "matures", more and more of its content is going to be for-pay. We can rail against that all we want, but it's bound to happen. We don't have a right to the product of the labour of others.

*And I'll criticise any company that violates the rights of others: shareholders, workers, people living on the planet...