
Salvation (for Newspapers) Is at Hand - NYTimes Paywall - unignorant
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/how-to-make-readers-pay-happily/?ref=opinion
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furyg3
So... they're trusting information provided by the _user's browser_ (referral
links, cookies, javascript... whatever) to determine whether or not the
article should be displayed to the user....

This makes me want to pat the NYT on the head and tell them how adorable they
are.

The fact that they're 1+ years away from implementing this may indicate that
they have _some_ knowledge about how technologically stupid this idea is, but
are hoping that investors don't figure that out.

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kgrin
On the other hand, I'm not sure how much they care if they don't get to
monetize the audience of people technical enough to forge a referrer (or even
use an extension that does it for you). I suspect pretty much no one on HN
even remembers what the web looked like pre-AdBlock, but it hasn't actually
killed web advertising.

~~~
Retric
I don't use AdBlock. I use a popup blocker, but I think if I am looking at a
website I should at least give them the basic revenue of viewing the
advertizing. Sometimes I even click on one if I am feeling generous to the
content holder. It's much the same with authors, when buying a book I like to
click the link Amazon.com from their website because it maximizes their
revenue.

PS: The problem with the newspaper model is it provides so little value. In
the old days they survived on advertizing but there are far more locations for
advertizing now, so the pay is far lower. Take the Haiti incident, there was a
7.0 earthquake which killed or injured a lot of people and destroyed most of
their infrastructure. All the important information in an SMS post and
everything after that point is just entertainment.

~~~
flatline
The problem with many ads is that they are designed to take attention away
from the rest of the site. As a result, you get flashing, jiggling, talking
ads that make many sites nearly unusable. Sure, you could avoid going to those
sites, or you could just use adblock...

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njharman
After all the bitching about how Google (and other aggregaters) are stealing
their content they erect a paywall for everybody but search and referral
links.

Disingenuous much?

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patrickgzill
My reaction/question is, "what about the NYT's cost structure has been
radically changed from what it was 5 years ago"?

Think about it, you have successful sites run with minimal overhead, such as
3-5 writers and 1 marketing/business/admin guy to handle the stuff the writers
don't know how to do. Compare that to what NYT does.

~~~
samdk
It's not so much that their cost structure has changed--it's that their
revenue streams have dried up. Fewer people are reading physical papers, and
web ad revenue has been on the decline for the past couple of years.

You can't compare the New York Times to a website run by a couple of people.
Most small news sites get their content from other small news sites or from
larger organizations that do a lot of the actual reporting (like the New York
Times).

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parka
There are so many internet business models to explore. Why is it that
newspapers are only focusing on the subscription based model?

