The New York Times has blinked. Its decision, announced overnight, to introduce a charge for “frequent readers” to use its website — but not until next year — is the most important development so far in the agonising who-will-pay-for-quality-journalism debate that is spooking the newspaper industry everywhere.
But anyone who jumps to the conclusion that this is a decision that will improve the predicament of all journalism or all newspapers — as many observers probably will — should think hard about what this means. Just because this is almost certainly the right decision for The New York Times doesn’t mean it is necessarily the right decision for all other newspapers.
And just because it will probably work to preserve the core resources needed to produce quality journalism at The New York Times doesn’t mean it will work to preserve the resources needed for quality journalism at other newspapers. As the Times’ own media columnist, David Carr, summarised it so well today:
People who remain reflexively bullish on free ignore the fact that the clock is ticking on many of the legacy businesses that produce that content.
The new approach is an effort to replace that ticking clock with a meter, and its success is not assured but to sit still would be dumb. It is not the job of The New York Times or any other mainstream media company to give away its content until it can no longer afford to do so.
By requiring certain kinds of digital consumers to participate, The Times is ensuring it will be in business for a long time to come. It could be a smaller business, one with less reach, but it will remain an engine of news and commerce.
In fact, it is precisely the NYT’s decision to join The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times — the world’s two other “special” English-language global newspapers with paywalls — that could actually make it so much harder for all the other second-tier mastheads in the US, Canada, the UK and Australia to induce many of their readers to pay for their second-tier content.
If I am forced to pay to read The New York Times online — which I will do willingly — there is far less chance that I will pay to read The Australian, The Age or The Sydney Morning Herald online. And if The Guardian or the London Telegraph joins the “big three” in introducing a charge, then the chances of “broadsheet” readers also paying for their local newspaper online are even more remote.
The Grey Lady has blinked. The world of free journalism will never be the same. But if anything this decision has probably made it harder, not easier, for the hundreds of good-but-not-great newspapers to generate meaningful revenues from online readers.
The Times, Journal, FT and eventually The Guardian have set the bar too high for the rest.
“The world of free journalism will never be the same. ” huh?
Eric, how do you figure “the world of free journalism” …back when you worked in the print medium, and even now, wasn’t journalsim paid for by 1) the people who brought the paper and 2) advertisers….what newspaper prorietors are trying to achieve is the same thing online…
Just out of interest, what numbers do the Times, the FT and the Guardian currently sell in Australia? I would hazard guess at miniscule, so to make the leap that this will kill the chances of Australian newspapers getting online revenue is stretching it a bit in my humble opinion…people who love the Herald Sun or the Age or the Telegraph, SMH etc etc are the target for Australian mastheads, not the tiny section of the population that reads the titles you mentioned, brainy though they must be…
I think Pete-from-Sydney misses the point. So much stuff in Australian media is second tier–rewritten from the NYT or The Guardian etc–as anyone who reads the NYT online knows full well. Fairfax sometimes have whole broadsheet pages filled with nothing but reprints (a day or two or three late) of pieces from the above.
Like Beecher, I will pay a reasonable fee for continued access to NYT online but not for most Australian media. Especially with ABC Drum etc picking up the ball dropped by the usual suspects…..
IMO, the “people who love the Herald Sun or the Age or the Telegraph, SMH etc” are least likely to want to pay online. Especially if Fairfax continue to refuse to get their act together. Websites and journalists and opinion writers scattered across a half dozen titles, each localized in a tiny country like Australia cannot possibly make any sense in this electronic globalized world. I am guessing that Pete is of the literally dying breed–and is not being replaced by people with similar habits and localized (polite word for provincial) loyalities and interests.
Michael James: eliminate from the ABC everything that they produce from newspaper based reporting. Add in to your mix all of the stuff you love from NYT, etc.
You then have: very little news at all, other than literal reports of staged events and press releases, some chatty gossip and opinion plus superb insights into the world of Manhattan, not at all the usual source of news on Australian policy and events. And, of course, Phil Adams.
And I wonder still: what the x*^! is “the world of free journalism”?????
Not clear what Robbo (at 2.50pm) is trying to say. I think my position is nicely summarized by the SBS slogan “News from Home for those who live in the World” (or something similar). And do you mean eliminating the likes of ABC’s China correspondent Stephen McDonell, or Foreign Correspondent’s reports from around the world, or 7.30 Report or Lateline which are the only news outlets that try to hold the government to public account. Or Lateline Business ditto for the business world. Landline for regional and agricultural matters. And a whole string of top-flight journalists like Ticky Fullerton (her story on water in Australia is an all-time classic), Leigh Sales (who broke the AWB affair), Virginia Trioli, Tony Eastley or the stories on Clean Coal and energy and climate change. Or Aboriginal affairs. Tony Jones on Lateline is one of Australia’s best inquisitorial journalists—witness his live confrontation between Plimer and Monbiot during Copenhagen. I’ll never forget his trapping Tony Abbot into a blatant in-your-face lie/180 degree about-face live on-camera; all you ever needed to know about the current opposition leader. Not to mention picking up high-quality defections from the increasingly marginalized Australian print media (Annabel Crabb, Crikey’s own Jonathan Green).
But it’s true Robbo (rhymes with yobbo, sorry couldn’t help myself), many more Australians watch The Biggest Loser and ACA, and buy Murdoch rags for (….dunno what, sports? certainly not unbiased news and reportage), and listen to Kyle and ….(whatshername..). Hmm, perhaps that’s why the country is such a mess and living off a few quarries owned by foreigners.