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Newsday Drops Its Paywall For 'At Least One Month'

from the but-paywalls-work-great,-right? dept

Mon, Dec 6th 2010 6:31pm — Mike Masnick

Remember how excited Cablevision was about putting up that paywall for Newsday, the newspaper that it owned? While the company claimed that the purpose of the paywall was really all about keeping Cablevision customers from deserting in favor of Verizon, it was still rather stunning to find out after three months, the company had secured a grand total of 35 paywall subscribers who weren't just grandfathered in as Cablevision TV subscribers. More recently it also came out that ad revenues for the paper had dropped off significantly as well, in part because of the much, much smaller audience. So it's interesting to note (via Romenesko) that Newsday has miraculously decided to drop its paywall "for at least a month." Seems like a pretty clear admission of failure.

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Filed Under: journalism, newsday, paywalls
Companies: cablevision

15 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 6 Dec 2010 @ 6:38pm

awwww
who needs them anyhow. please put back up and stay until your dead.
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John Duncan Yoyo, 6 Dec 2010 @ 6:40pm

>Seems like a pretty clear admission of failure.

For at least a month they are admitting failure.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Dec 2010 @ 7:27pm

Or...
Or maybe it was so successful, they don't need money anymore and can just give it away for free!
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DanVan (profile), 6 Dec 2010 @ 7:31pm

Paywalls in themselves are not ALL going to fail

The problem is companies have not figured out that they need to offer ORIGINAL content at a small price to build a fan base.

These idiots continue putting walls up with little original materials, bad sites, and high prices. It is an absolute joke.

I pay for a site that gives me specific news about a specific topic. I enjoy it and have no problem paying the price that I do.
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- Anonymous Coward, 7 Dec 2010 @ 4:34am
  
  Re:
  I think you've hit the nail on the head. Pay walls aren't necessarily a bad idea if what you offer behind the wall is worth paying for. Obviously you still need to make sure people know what's behind the wall in the first place to entice them to pay.
  
  The problem with the current crop of pay walls is they are from crap, generic news outlets that offer nothing over the hundreds of other crap, generic news outlets offer.
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- Anonymous Coward, 7 Dec 2010 @ 5:37am
  
  Re:
  yep it works for porn sites. kinda.
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Darryl, 6 Dec 2010 @ 9:42pm

Remember !!!! how could I forget,, WHAT A DAY !!!..
Remember how excited Cablevision was about putting up that paywall for Newsday, the newspaper that it owned?

OH yea, I remember, WHAT A DAY, did we party on that day, I will NEVER forget that day,, it was just a MAJOR event, right up there with the FJK assasination, and with 9/11..

Mike, how could I not remeber such an amazing day as that day,, I will never forget it.. it will go down in history as one of those greats..

(Gee Mike, most people remember things that are actualy usefull, important, or that affects yourself, perhaps you need a defrag, free up some storage space, so you can put actual facts and real information there. Maybe you can fill it with economics, society, commerce and how the world actually works, remembering when some dude did something that has nothing to do with you is a waste of ability, and you dont have ability to waste.. )
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- fogbugzd (profile), 6 Dec 2010 @ 10:22pm
  
  Re: Remember !!!! how could I forget,, WHAT A DAY !!!..
  Well, I remember it.
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- Anonymous Coward, 6 Dec 2010 @ 11:54pm
  
  Re: Remember !!!! how could I forget,, WHAT A DAY !!!..
  How's those sour grapes tasting?
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- Anonymous Coward, 7 Dec 2010 @ 12:49am
  
  Re: Remember !!!! how could I forget,, WHAT A DAY !!!..
  Seriously, Darryl? Your trolling has been reduced to that? I suppose it's easier than getting every fact wrong, though.
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Sachin, 7 Dec 2010 @ 3:35am

for life
I don't need that anyways...they should drop it for life...
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Chuck Norris' Enemy (deceased) (profile), 7 Dec 2010 @ 5:21am

Lost Eyeballs
The paywall has probably already done the damage. In three months, faithful readers who would rather not pay probably found another online news source, changed their news feeds, and will never know that Newsday is free again. If they do find out that Newsday is paywall-less, they probably won't bother switching back...especially if it may only be for one month. Smart marketing move!
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Hephaestus (profile), 7 Dec 2010 @ 7:44am

This make me curious about rupert murdochs experiment in paywalls ... I have a running bet here at Techdirt I need to pay.
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noesbueno (profile), 7 Dec 2010 @ 10:10am

newsday under paywall
i do remember that day, biggest think i noticed immediately was the quantity of comments posted by readers dropped to almost zero. articles which would have had over 200 comments would have 5 or 6. and they also started rabidly controlling and limiting which articles even allowed comments.
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me, 17 Jan 2011 @ 12:33pm

Paywall
oh look at that. paywall back up. guess it works afterall.
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