Murdoch Seems Poised To Drop WSJ's Paywall As Well

from the better-for-long-term-business dept

With the New York Times finally realizing (two years too late) that paywalls don't make sense for online newspapers, the one major remaining holdout is still the Wall Street Journal. So, it should come as little surprise that reporters wasted no time in tracking down new owner Rupert Murdoch to see if he stood by earlier comments suggesting that he'd make the Wall Street Journal free online. It certainly sounds like he's still leaning in that direction, saying that he doesn't see how making it free would hurt the paper, and that, if done right, it could help make the paper a lot more money. Indeed, though, we're still waiting for an explanation for why it's taken the pre-eminent business newspaper in the world this long to understand the larger picture.

Filed Under: media, murdoch, newspapers, paywall
Companies: dow jones, wall street journal

NY Times Does The Math: Pay Walls Don't Make Business Sense

from the about-time dept

As was rumored last month, the NY Times has decided to pull the plug on its TimesSelect paywall service, making all NY Times content from 1987 forward free online (they're also making all of the content from 1851 to 1922 free, but that's already in the public domain). This move comes two years after the paywall was first put in place. At the time, we were one of many who pointed out that this was going to make the NY Times a lot less valuable, and it seems that the business folks at the NY Times finally did the math and came to the same conclusion. They note that subscription growth was slowing (something that was obvious over a year ago) as advertising growth was ramping -- and that they hadn't counted on how many people would be drop-in visitors, coming from other sites. That seems like an odd statement, since it was quite obvious more than two years ago that search engines and other sites tended to drive a tremendous amount of traffic to news sites. Either way, like others before it, the NY Times should be congratulated on doing the right thing, while questioned for what took it so long (or even what made the company make the mistake in the first place).

Filed Under: media, newspapers, paywall, timesselect
Companies: new york times