The Times They Are A-Changeling

Up until this week, The New York Times has been vague about its plans to erect an online pay wall starting in early 2010. Maybe they should have kept it that way.

All we knew was that The Times would follow the Financial Times model—i.e., a metered-access system where site visitors can to read a fixed number of articles for free before they hit the pay wall.

Now, The Times is starting to share more details of its plans, but instead of striking a clear, consistent chord, we’re hearing a cacophony of mixed messages.

Speaking at the PaidContent 2010 conference at the Times’ headquarters in New York, chairman and publisher Arthur Sulzberger, president and CEO Janet Robinson and senior VP of digital operations Martin Nisenholtz entertained questions from journalists. Reuters’ Felix Salmon asked whether Times branded blogs such as Freakonomics and Paul Krugman’s blog would be counted toward the quota, to which Mr. Nisenholtz responded that Times’ blogs would be behind the pay wall.

As Mr. Salmon pointed out in a blog posting of his own, this decision by The Times raises uncomfortable possibilities, including:

• Readers who participate in the Freakonomics comments section will be prompted to subscribe to the full New York Times online package in order to post.
• The Times will be allowing free access to site visitors who follow links from external blogs to NYTimes.com stories (as the company said it would do), while potentially not allowing the same access to visitors who arrive at a Times story via a Times blog.

When panel moderator Staci Kramer of PaidContent.org’s ContentNext Media pressed the panelists on the latter point, Mr. Nisenholtz alluded to a Google system that would cap the number of “first-link-free” stories that site visitors could read on NYTimes.com. Mr. Sulzberger added that The Times wasn’t interested in building “a system that just tries to please 5%-7% of the audience,” referring to “side-door” entrants who arrive at NYTimes.com from third-party sites.

This strategy seems destined to drive away readers. The blogosphere is the epitome of free media, and possibly the last thing that The Times should put behind its pay wall. Other sources of content—in-depth news analyses, crossword puzzles, archives, even video—seem like things that people would be willing to pay for. But blogs?

In the year they have to figure this out, let’s hope The Times leaders see the light. Otherwise, they might end up with TimesSelect déjà vu all over again.