Surprise: NY Times Doesn't Think Osama Bin Laden's Death Warrants Taking Down The Paywall
from the it's-a-monthly-thing dept
This is kind of bizarre. The folks over at the Nieman Lab have pointed out that when the NY Times launched its paywall, one of the things they said was that in the event of a "9/11-like" story, they can push a button and pull down the paywall to make sure everyone had access to the news. And yet... the head honchos at the NY Times decided not to do so for the news of Osama Bin Laden's death. The argument for why really makes very little sense. They basically say that since it happened on May 1st, and the "counter" for how many free stories people get per month just reset to zero, there wasn't much of a point. Except, now that means that those same people will hit the limit much earlier if they scanned some of the stories. In other words, the incentive, yet again, was for people to find the news elsewhere. It's really difficult to fathom why the NY Times is so infatuated with driving people to other sites.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: osama bin laden, paywall
Companies: ny times
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There's another site on the net called drudge. Every Sunday I guess one of the staff at NYT's puts in a link that goes straight to the firewall. Now I could paste in the title within the hour and find a link on the net to bypass the firewall but why bother. If I got to do that, just as well read it at another site too.
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Shhhh
File under: 'Go lemmings go'.
Ack... who am I tryin' to kid... they're gonna keep on being stupid regardless. Carry on.
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What's the problem?
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I get frustrated with it every time I try to read something, so I have decided to instead look elsewhere.
As for the NY times, I haven't been to their site in ages and will probably never go for the same reason.
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Neo: the truth?
Boy: there is no paywall.
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Devils Advocate, really... I'm not Trolling.
Now with that said, I'll just sit and wait for the Times to die a slow and agonizing death as their content suffocates behind that joke of a paywall. Funny thing is with their paywall in place I don't think anyone would even really consider using the NYTimes as their goto place for news during a crisis unless you're one of hundreds (or is it dozens) with an account. The rest of us have pretty easily found other solid resources for our news, which we would go to first.
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Re: Devils Advocate, really... I'm not Trolling.
The Emergency Broadcast System was not used on 9/11 either... I'm not sure when an "actual emergency" is going to happen, but they're still waiting... Lots of false alarms, though.
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I understand reviewing numbers on at most a biannual basis, but this story is fairly self-explanatory. The results are fairly self-explanatory.
If in fact this impacts their numbers, they'll either adjust policy, or they won't, but why does this news in particular matter? Is it because you don't want an institution to fail? Because you do?
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Also, I suppose even Masnick can't resist going "I told ya so" all the time ^^
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on May 3rd, 2011 @ 3:49pm
Sorry, couldn't help feeding it.
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Which is no requirement for TD to continue unabated.
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I very much understand TD's reason for understanding why it will fail, and then covering the fail in progress.
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Maybe they didn't see the point...
"HOLY HELL! Bin Laden has been killed! Drop the paywall and let everyone... oh... you're here already... um... ...
As you were, then.
Oh, this story reads better on actual paper, so try that."
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Re: Maybe they didn't see the point...
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They are stories about the NTY's failure to understand the business it is in and how the world is changing.
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Did anyone even go to NYtimes.com for that news this time around?
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Re: Did anyone even go to NYtimes.com for that news this time around?
Not only is CNN news free, but CNN even has an Android app (for free) that I can put on my phone (for free) so they can send me alerts (for free) of important news so I can read it immediately (for free).
Why would I want to be abused by the NYT?
Oh, because reporting is expensive and dangerous. I guess it must not be expensive and dangerous for CNN though.
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Re: Did anyone even go to NYtimes.com for that news this time around?
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But, but...
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9/11 type story?
But with respect I am not so sure about the suggestion that the raid on bin Laden's compound is "a '9/11-like' story"
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