The Story So Far by Bill Grueskin

Author:Bill Grueskin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Journalism
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2011-05-12T16:00:00+00:00

New York Times Media Group revenue mix

The Times' website is tremendously popular, but digital ads have been growing unevenly and don't come close to making up for the shortfall in print ad sales. Indeed, the site, with more than 30 million monthly unique users in the U.S., contributes less than 20 percent of the Times' overall revenue.

So the Times devised a pay scheme that it hoped would be porous enough to allow occasional readers (around 85 percent of the total) to browse the site for free, but priced aggressively enough to generate significant revenue from its most devoted readers.15 It was a difficult plan to execute—requiring more than 14 months, and reportedly costing tens of millions of dollars.16

When the Times introduced the plan in March 2011, many found it to be unnecessarily complex. Users are supposed to be limited to 20 stories a month before they hit the wall. But because there are so many exceptions depending on how one accesses the site—for example, via Google, Twitter or a blog—even some experts are befuddled by the plan. Staci Kramer, editor of paidcontent.org, which covers the digital media industry, wrote that “the logistics are far more complex than anything should be that doesn't require a degree in quantum physics.”17 There are different rates for online, smartphone and tablet access, ranging from $195 to $455 a year for the full package. Consumers can't get annual, or even monthly, subscriptions, because everything is priced in four-week increments. And the price led one commentator to headline his blog post, “The New York Times is Delusional.”18

The Times is unusual among big publishers in that it doesn't require print subscribers to pay anything to access its digital editions. Both WSJ.com and FT.com have long charged everyone for online access, on the theory that digital editions offer utility, archives and tools that the print edition can't. The Times is offering its print readers a sweet deal: Weekend-only subscribers can pay as little as $327 a year, and in the bargain get a digital package worth almost a third more. Times executives insist this isn't an effort to prop up the company's more lucrative legacy revenue. “We didn't make this decision to bolster print,” Janet Robinson, the Times' company CEO, said shortly after the pay plan debuted. “We made this decision to create a new revenue stream.”19 But given the way the offer is structured, it's hard to argue that the two aren't closely tied. The pricing—which is higher for tablets than for the Web—also reflects Apple's decision to take a 30 percent cut of subscriptions purchased through iTunes.

A few weeks after the Times instituted the pay plan, Robinson reported that more than 100,000 people had signed up for digital subscriptions.20 Most of those were enrolled for the introductory offer of 99 cents for the first four weeks, according to a person close to the situation, so it isn't clear how that will play out when those subscribers start getting billed up to $35 for every four weeks of unlimited access.

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