There has been so much written about the NY Times paywall over the past weeks, but everyone agrees on one thing: It’s a big risk. With that said, the voices are mixed as to the chances of its success or failure. I understand the Times needs to increase profits, but I believe they may need to reinvent the Times, not their revenue model.
Ben Kunz smartly tried to prove this new pricing model may actually produce less or at best only equal revenue numbers in his recent post on Thought Gadgets (http://bit.ly/fTG4dO), but there are three additional negative issues I see.
First, it’s a complicated system, with tiered pricing, numerous loopholes and arcane favoritism. Most people own more than one device and use them interchangeably. Punishing those with an iPad and iPhone and a computer is not user friendly. And it’s a fact that there are numerous ways to avoid paying altogether, e.g., if you come from Twitter or Facebook, you are able exceed the 20 article limit per month. And in a truly cluelessness move, they assume that charging less for the print edition will conserve that audience, ergo maintain the high price they get paid for print ads---well guess what, print readers are a dying breed.
Second, this kind of experiment is better launched with partners. I remember when airlines began charging for luggage. This was an outrage and would normally cause an immediate brand exodus, but because the airlines acted in almost full unison, passengers had no choice and grudgingly accepted the fees. Now obviously getting 5-10 airlines is a lot easier than corralling the dozens of major news providers to agree to charge for what was previously free, but going it alone* when there are so many other choices for news is close to suicidal. I guess the Times is hoping or praying that a consumer feels only they can offer all the news that’s fit to print, but I don’t think they should hold their breath.
Third, their content is not unique—especially for global news. In some cases, there is actually better content from other news organizations, e.g., BBC and NPR. In addition, there are news outlets better suited to presenting news online that are not hurting for revenue, namely television news stations. CNN and NBC, to name a few. They still derive healthy revenues from their original content platforms, so the digital platform is not impacting them as negatively. In fact their broadcasts provide exactly the kind of content users are looking for on the web: video.
And that is really the rub.
The Times is trying to solve the wrong problem with the wrong solution. We know they need to increase revenue, but we also know you don’t make money by charging more, you make money by providing more value. The Real Problem: their content is just not as valuable as it used to be.
When the “grey lady” as it’s affectionately known launched in 1851, it grew to an ascendant position at a time of much less competition, but those days are gone and they are not coming back. They managed to hold on during the advent of television because they still had a brand name second to none, but those days of waiting for news to be delivered to your door or having a single trusted source, are over. The standard network news anchors still hold some sway, but even they face competition from independents such as Current TV, Boing Boing, citizen journalists, and, of course, twitter.
I read an excellent article today at Co Design today titled “Wanna Solve Problems: Find Ways to Fail Quicker” (http://bit.ly/fuF7hm). Basically, when challenged to invent a man-powered flying machine, most people took a year to design and build a machine, attempted to fly it, crashed it, then they would take another year to build a different machine, and then …well you get the idea. So instead, the inventor built a model that could crash and be rebuilt quickly, so he moved towards a solution much faster than his competitors. The problem wasn’t the flight, it was the crash. Extrapolating from that, the problem is not revenue, it’s content.
No, the Times doesn’t need to reinvent the payment model, it needs to reinvent the Times. They do have three key brand attributes that they can leverage to explore new content directions: Their name and their location and their one edition that really sells, the Sunday Magazine. So here are my suggestions:
1. Leverage their name to launch their own evening news show. I could easily hear the announcer say “And now it’s time for the “New York Times Evening News”, and highlight their editors and reporters. If Al Jazeera can break into this market, so can the Times. Of course, it will take time to grow the market but TV news is not going away, and it provides a highly visible platform with associated ad dollars and generates excellent content to be repurposed on other channels.
2. We all know NYC is the best city in the world (and I’m allowed to say that because I was born there) so they should leverage that and start their own TED series..there’s room especially if they make it less expensive than TED but with a New York twist: Call it the New York Times Artists and Innovators Series. Rent out Julian Schnabel’s Pink Palazzo and hold a series of talks there that would include NY luminaries such as Woody Allen, Jeff Koons, Clay Shirky. Start small but with stellar talent. I know they’ll draw the right crowd, and create the right content that they can sell ads against.
3. Leverage their location to create a site called the New York Blogs. And by that I mean, a la AOL, buy the top ten NYC centered blogs, such as the Sartorialist, Gawker and Gothamist, and aggregate the content to be THE New York City online destination for what’s hot/what’s not. NYC is the one local destination that’s really global.
4. Maybe even…dare I say this…get rid of the daily print edition and beef up the Sunday Mag into a glossy. In 2009, The Sunday Edition it was the best selling newspaper in the county and I’m sure it’s still very very popular
In the end, everyone wants the NY Times to survive, so hopefully they'll find the right solution to the right problem sooner rather than later.
* I just learned The SF Chronicle may be putting up a paywall so maybe the Times will have a partner.
