New York Times Steps Closer To The Abyss

The NY Times announced they will be charging heavy users to view their web content.  Apparently once someone clicks on their 21st article, they will be presented with (3) pay-for-content digital packages.  How the Times will know when someone clicks on their 21st article is unclear.

Unless they will require all users to log in, it seems like a weak attempt to enforce their pay wall.    I can only hope I'm wrong and the Times will opt for hard-core enforcement and drive themselves into irrelevancy.

Here's a stat I'll revisit later:

The Times claims to have  "210,000 digital subscribers, and 400,000 copies circulate in print "


Here's what the Times has in store:

"...the pay wall's effect on the reach of the Murdoch papers has been direct and dire. Until the pay wall's creation last summer, the two Times papers (Times of London & Sunday Times) drew 20 million distinct online readers a month. Now, about 105,000 people visit their sites or digital products monthly, meaning the papers lost about 95 percent of their online audience . Only some 50,000 people actually have paid monthly digital subscriptions."

And for a world where digital papers are the (only) newspaper, that's a bad thing if you desire the power to sway public opinion.

And that's what the NY Times will have to chose between:  Being a powerful political agenda setter, or making money selling newspapers.  Ultimately, the real money is in swaying the public policy.  That's something the NY Times can't see because they've grown too comfortable with their unchallenged monopoly on that power.