Will The New York Times' Paywall Help to Avoid Collapse?

It appears The New York Times have found a solution to the 'online news reader only' problem. Last week, The New York Times announced that it would erect a paywall in order to help collect from news readers who only get their news online from their website. Their idea is neat because the paywall will get the frequent readers to pay for The New York Times content, but not the new, visiting readers.

This plan is called a 'metered-model,' will call for people who visit the website (nytimes.com) a undetermined amount of times per month to pay an undetermined fee, excepting those who currently subscribe to the weekly print paper, including those who only get it on Sunday. Not knowing how much The New York Times will charge, I'm curious to know if it will cure the problem newspapers are having.

I say yes. Currently, The New York Times (nytimes.com) has 17 million unique visitors per month which allow them to have high ad prices. Since they are taking their time, and getting this high-tech program to separate new and old visitors they can still keep those good ad sales up, attract new readers and hopefully charge those who want to keep coming back.

The print journalism industry has gone through a tough time in recent years and has needed to make some changes in order to survive. Is this the solution or will this only decrease readership? Now, I'm curious to see how many other newspapers will take on this approach. Further, if it works for The New York Times, how fast it will take over the print newspaper websites. Lastly, as a social media user, I wonder how this will affect linkage to The New York Times page and articles. In another release last week, The New York Times made it clear that they are aware of this reality, stating that its metered model would allow it to still "stay connected to a search-driven Web." It's smart that they are on top of this because this aspect is equally as important to its survival as publication income. In order to stay afloat, the site must continue to be part of the large online conversation.