It's Readership, Not Authors That Matter

The New York Times is dropping its TimesSelect approach, as more and more people were de-selecting it. But I doubt they've learned the real lesson. Advertisers don't pay to be placed next to names like Rich, Dowd, or anyone else's, for that matter. They pay to be placed along side copy that people read. That hurdle may well still be in their future, particularly as Murdoch takes the helm of the WSJ.

While other online publications were abandoning subscriptions, the Times took the opposite approach in 2005 and began charging for access to well-known writers, including Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich and Thomas L. Friedman.

The number of Web-only subscribers who pay $7.95 a month or $49.95 a year fell to just over 221,000 in June, down from more than 224,000 in April.

Comments

[chris]

This is great news. Now I will have more money each month to buy the Limbaugh Letter and find out how to deal with libruls.

[Dan Riehl]

"Now I will have more money each month to buy the Limbaugh Letter"

My Daddy always told me to not pay for what I can get for free. That goes for media on the Left, as well as the Right. But I'd wager Limbaugh's profit model runs circles around Times Select.

[seekeronos]

NYT = Offal in, offal out. And any way you look at it... its all just plain awful.

(Rimshot, please!)

[chris]

Haha. I bet you are right about that. With respect to the Times Select, I think that it is used as a kind of thank you for getting a subscription to the print edition. Can't imagine that anyone would pay for it.