Tag Archives: arthur sulzberger

paidContent: Sulzberger: $40m estimate for paywall cost is ‘vastly wrong’

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Arthur Sulzberger has said Bloomberg’s report stating the development of the New York Times’ paywall cost between $40 million and $50 million is “vastly wrong”, but refused to say what the switch to paid digital content did cost, according to a post on paidContent.

Sulzberger also declined to offer any numbers when it comes to subscribers, saying it was too soon but that the company would provide some details eventually. At another point, asked about complaints that the pay plan is too complex, he urged people to be patient. Noting that the company was able to tweak the system between the launch in Canada and the US-global launch 10 days later, Sulzberger said: “We’re going to learn, adapt, make it simpler. But I don’t agree that it’s too complex. It’s new. Let it breathe for a little bit before you make judgment.”

paidContent’s full post is at this link.

New York Times: Not doing any paywall coverage in its own back yard

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A comment by the public editor of the New York Times points out how little coverage the newspaper has given to its plans to start charging for access to its website.

… The Times has published multiple stories in the past year on the introduction of an Internet paywall by Rupert Murdoch’s Times of London. It also covered in-depth the seamy controversy engulfing another Murdoch property in Britain, News of the World, as it contended with charges of unlawfully hacking into celebrities’ cellphone messages.

Of the Times’s own pay model for its Web site, though, all that has trickled into print is an initial story 14 months ago announcing that the plan would be carried out in a year, plus occasional subsequent references to the looming event. No significant story has been published — at least not as of my Friday evening deadline for this column.

Full post on the NYT at this link.

Wired: New York print war is really about digital future

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There has been plenty of excited coverage of the playground spat between the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times started by the Journal’s move into general interest metro coverage. The Journal’s news section, Greater New York, launched yesterday, and the Times war committee responded quickly with a memo to subscribers reminding them just how great the paper’s New York section is, and has been for so much longer than the Journal’s johnny-come-lately.

Harold Evans has taken up a ring-side seat at the Daily Beast to take score as the bout progresses over the week.

So far the whole thing seems, unsurprisingly, to have revolved about print, but Wired’s Eliot Van Buskirk claims the war is “really about digital”.

The spat appears to be about local New York coverage, but really, it’s about both organizations’ digital future (…) By cutting ad rates and suddenly going after the same non-financial local stories as the Times, Murdoch is waging a good, old-fashioned newspaper war in the traditional sense. But the spoils this time will be the hearts and minds of a digital audience faced with far more choices than consumers of print.

Full story at this link…

AFP: Online pay model will be ‘critical second revenue stream’ says Sulzberger

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New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger says that charging for the paper’s online content will provide a “critical second revenue stream”.

Speaking at the Bloomberg BusinessWeek 2010 Media Summit, Sulzberger also reassured readers that the print edition of the paper will continue for many years to come:

It’s a critical part of today, it will be a critical part I think for many years to come (…) The iPad is also going to be a critical part just the way the Kindle’s a critical part.

At the end of the day we can’t define ourselves by our method of distribution (…) What we care about at the end of day is our journalism, our quality journalism.

Full story at this link…