The Gray Lady is Free Again!
Here's a topic I debated endlessly during my 10 years as a magazine editor at a publishing company: whether or not to charge for online access to current and archived materials. Apparently, the New York Times has seen the light and ended its two-year experiment in restricting access to Op-Ed and other sections of the online edition to paying subscribers. Finally, I can read Bob Herbert again.
The Times said the project had met expectations, drawing 227,000 paying subscribers — out of 787,000 over all — and generating about $10 million a year in revenue.
“But our projections for growth on that paid subscriber base were low, compared to the growth of online advertising,” said Vivian L. Schiller, senior vice president and general manager of the site, NYTimes.com.
What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.
“What wasn’t anticipated was the explosion in how much of our traffic would be generated by Google, by Yahoo and some others,” Ms. Schiller said.
The Times’s site has about 13 million unique visitors each month, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, far more than any other newspaper site.
Labels: New York Times
posted by Alexa Weber Morales @ 9/18/2007
5 comments
5 Comments:
Bob Herbert, huh? Good for you. A minority taste, however, apparently:
WHY IS BOB HERBERT BORING?....More than likely, you love Paul Krugman and hate David Brooks. Or vice versa. But at least you feel something about them. Ditto for the rest of the New York Times' stable of columnists. Except for one of them: Bob Herbert. In the October issue of the Monthly, T.A. Frank tries to figure out what's wrong:
Herbert has one of the most powerful megaphones in the world with which to move elite opinion — that of policymakers, journalists, entertainers, businesspeople, and the millions of middle-class readers of the New York Times — and yet he doesn't move it. Twice a week, Herbert yells at them for their indifference. Twice a week, they slam the door and run out for a joyride with badboy David Brooks. If Herbert is a bridge between the problems that are neglected and the people who can fix them, then he should be closed for inspection.
Bob Herbert and his fans disagree with me, naturally. Herbert would say that he has helped shift public opinion on issues such as the suppression of black votes in Florida, the rendition of Maher Arar to Syria, and the death penalty. But what I see is that his most influential audience isn't usually paying attention. Maybe that's the fault of Bob Herbert, or maybe it's the fault of Beltway insularity, or maybe it's the fault of life itself. But anyone who wants to advance these crucial issues must figure out the answer to this question: Why is Bob Herbert boring?
That's a harsh question. But it's true, as a Nexis search confirms, that Herbert almost never drives the media agenda. People don't agree with him, and they don't disagree with him. They just ignore him — and the blogosphere is no better. A quick check of Google Blog returns about 100,000 hits for Krugman and Dowd and about 50,000 for Brooks, Friedman, and Rich. And Herbert, who is perhaps more reliably liberal and more reliably correct than any of the others? He gets 15,000 hits.
Why? I won't spoil the ending, but it turns out that Frank's piece has some surprisingly interesting things to say about Herbert's boredom quotient. Go read it. And when you're done, go read Herbert's latest column, about GOP dirty tricks in the state of California. Better yet, wait until midnight to click that link: that's when the Times paywall dies its long-awaited death and the whole world can read Herbert again.
Of course, the whole world will also be able to read Maureen Dowd once again. There's a cloud for every silver lining, isn't there?
—Kevin Drum 1:10 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (112)
Ack! You tricked me! What a mean article about Herbert being boring. I mean, why is Rush Limbaugh a "big fat idiot" who draws millions of listeners (assuming he's still on the air, I don't follow his career)? Why does Brooks draw readers? Why does Dowd? The three unlikely peers have one thing in common: shtick. Limbaugh has his wacko lingo, Brooks has a gift for wrapping shallowness with a veneer of intellectual rigor and Dowd has created something akin to Caen's three-dot approach, a specific column haiku only she can generate. There. I've said it. Hope this blog doesn't degenerate into op-ed blathering as a result.
Perhaps that's why I like Herbert. He's a damn good journalist, he does his leg work, he tells me about things I feel enlightened to learn about, he's not too NYC-centric, and there's not a lot of waste in his columns. That's probably what most people find boring (if indeed they do). Substance.
I just read the Washington Monthly piece. It makes me so uncomfortable. Take this quote:
"Some experts suggest that human nature also just resists bad news. Dan Heath, coauthor of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, observed in an e-mail to me that columnists who inflict hard truths on readers
'have to make deposits along with the withdrawals. Otherwise, if they cause us hurt twice a week, we instinctively look away, like smokers who don't want to look at blackened-lung photos. Conversely, if Dave Barry took a stand on health care, I think it'd be fixed overnight ... he's made so many deposits and so few withdrawals that millions feel like they owe him something.' "
Yeah, right. That was facile.
Frankly, I know what this guy means--that's why I canceled my subscription to Harper's. I couldn't stand the unrelentingly depressing articles. I don't know, I never got that feeling from Herbert. Dowd drives me crazy, so I stopped reading her oh, about 5 years ago. Same goes for Brooks. Molly Ivins, RIP, has no more to say. Now, it's true, Ivins had that quirky voice when compared to Herbert. But she said herself she didn't fit in at the Times.
But has the era of media criticism come full circle? Press eating press?
Finally, I dispute the measurement of relevance of a columnist, or his effectiveness at driving "the media agenda." Lexis-Nexis? Blog postings? Total hearsay from the author's media insiders? What about traditional measures such as letters to the editor? Letters Herbert receives? Awards? The effects of his journalism (documented in the piece)? And finally, the quality of his work? The article doesn't say he's not great at what he does.
Finally, it's the responsibility of a balanced news organization to present a full roster of qualified writers, not just those who are most popular.
Oh dear, baby is screaming...
Whoa, I was just sayin'.... But I think you ought to copy this exchange (or at least your replies) to the Washington Monthly -- and especially Bob Herbert himself. What a fierce defender and supporter you are!
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