Locking yourself behind your own subscription wall

The Internet has revolutionized the way that we look at media - and the way that it interacts with us. That’s undeniable, although some may disagree as to the extent.

And in this new environment, the modern publication can’t afford to alienate its online readers.

Unfortunately, that seems to be precisely what some publications are doing.

 

Subscription pay-walls are nothing particularly new, but, especially to the blogging community, they happen to be particularly annoying. Some publications can manage to get away with them, but I would say this is, generally, only the case when those publications hold a more specific interest - when what they have to say cannot be found elsewhere.

 

Of course, this being such a vague set of conditions, it’s always a gamble. And, depending on the publication, some might feel the gamble worthwhile, in order to make up for sagging print revenues, or even to deter pesky bloggers from ’stealing’ content. Some might succeed, and some might fail.

 

In some cases, it’s much less of a gamble, and more of an assured failure. For instance, when the New York Times was in the process of deciding whether or not to create a pay-wall for their content, my friend Jay Currie wrote: 

 

"Now, if the NYT was the sole provider of American and international news this might make sense; but it isn’t and this will simply mean the Times will no longer matter on the net.

You will remember that the Times tried this stunt before placing its columnists behind a paywall: the net effect was that the Times lost share and people remembered that MoDo is a hack and Paul Krugman is the dumbest guy to ever win a near Nobel in economics. They were not missed.

The net is about attention. Nothing the NYT makes commands the sort of attention which has people paying to see it."

And that is the problem in a nut-shell. Putting your content up behind a pay-wall only works if what you’re hiding away is exclusive content. And no matter how much the New York Times might - foolishly - believe themselves to be the pinnacle of media excellence, they are simply too derivative to make it worth subscribing. Or at least, to anybody not already dedicated to the Times. And when it comes to the online community, the bloggers, the forum-goers, the Facebookers and social media denizens, a pay-wall means a death sentence. It means irrelevancy. And while the Internet is by no means the only market to consider, it will be a dangerous market to ignore.

This is a lesson that Long Island Daily Newsday has learned. Via John Kobin, in the New York Observer:

"So, three months later, how many people have signed up to pay $5 a week, or $260 a year, to get unfettered access to newsday.com?

The answer: 35 people. As in fewer than three dozen. As in a decent-sized elementary-school class.

That astoundingly low figure was revealed in a newsroom-wide meeting last week by publisher Terry Jimenez when a reporter asked how many people had signed up for the site. Mr. Jimenez didn’t know the number off the top of his head, so he asked a deputy sitting near him. He replied 35.

[...]

The web site redesign and relaunch cost the Dolans $4 million, according to Mr. Jimenez. With those 35 people, they’ve grossed about $9,000.

In that time, without question, web traffic has begun to plummet, and, certainly, advertising will follow as well.

Of course, there are a few caveats. Anyone who has a newspaper subscription is allowed free access; anyone who has Optimum Cable, which is owned by the Dolans and Cablevision, also gets it free. Newsday representatives claim that 75 percent of Long Island either has a subscription or Optimum Cable.

[...]

"Given the number of households in our market that have access to Newsday’s Web site as a result of other subscriptions, it is no surprise that a relatively modest number have chosen the pay option," said a Cablevision spokeswoman.
 
Nevertheless, traffic has fallen. In December, the web site had 1.5 million unique visits, a drop from 2.2 million in October, according to Nielsen Media Online. "

( Read the rest here. H/t to Small Dead Animals )

Newsday has learned the lesson of Internet pay-walls. The New York Times may well be the next to be schooled. It’s a lesson that the Internet had to teach - perhaps one of the few. The Internet may be young, but the dead-tree media, for all of the experience that they have in their field, may find themselves having to adapt to the web to survive.