This is more mistermix’s beat, but these figures are amazing:
The Times has lost almost 90% of its online readership compared to February since making registration mandatory in June, calculations by the Guardian show.
Unregistered users of thetimes.co.uk are now “bounced” to a Times+ membership page where they have to register if they want to view Times content. Data from the web metrics company Experian Hitwise shows that only 25.6% of such users sign up and proceed to a Times web page; based on custom categories (created at the Guardian) that have been used to track the performance of major UK press titles online, visits to the Times site have fallen to 4.16% of UK quality press online traffic, compared with 15% before it made registration compulsory on 15 June.
[….]The figures are also unlikely to surprise some executives at the Times: the Sunday Times’s editor, John Witherow, predicted in May that “perhaps more than 90%” of pre-registration readers were likely to be lost once the registration-only service was implemented.
The 90% number comes from assuming that most of that 4.16% bounces once it hits the registration wall.
(via)
QuaintIrene
Most of us are registered, signed, logged-in on so many damn sites already, that another one demands we take the time to fill out yet another form, the reaction, understandbly is ‘F*ck it!’
thomas Levenson
While the Times (UK) has been very kind to me lately (many props for my most recent book — and look how carefully I’m not linkwhoring it), I have to say that it couldn’t happen to a nicer proprietor.
August J. Pollak
And yet the alternative appears to be those Facebook synchronization dealies… which are loathed even more.
Brachiator
The Guardian UK article includes this little nubbin:
I presume that this is largely based on the idea that the print reader is somebody in the UK looking at an ad.
The sophisticated thing to do would be to tailor ads based on the online reader’s country of origin.
But we’re not dealing with sophistication here.
Lev
The Oasis reference is a nice touch considering that this is about the London Times, but my anal-retentiveness won’t let me not say that Wonderwall should be one word.
Tonal Crow
But the 4.16% figure seems likely already to account for most of the bounces, because
. I’d guess that most of the visits now come from people who’ve registered, since it’s been over a month since they put up the paywall. Things on the intertubes move fast.
bkny
hahaha … fuck rupert murdoch. his nypost is a consistent money loser too.
ET
Question what will happen when/if most news sites require subscription? Right now most don’t, so there are alternatives to the Times therefor the Times takes a hit on numbers.
Arclite
I agree with ET. News is an expensive endeavor. Right now, most money is still being made by print editions. But those are steadily declining. Print ad revenues are also declining. Online ad revenue can’t make up for these losses. At some point ALL the news creating sites will have to go subscription to stay in business. You just can’t the world news using amateurs who write in their free time. Most stories require full time people doing research & interviews, following up on leads, etc.
MikeJ
@ET: Newspapers have already said that they should be exempted from anti-trust laws if they collude to all put up pay walls at one time. This was a year ago or so, I don’t have the cite, but I remember being stunned that they would publicly call for license to break the law.
Brachiator
@ET:
Some news sites are trying to move sideways into becoming pay sites by charging for iPad and smartphone apps. Ultimately it’s all about trying to monetize the Internet. Ultimately, whoever comes up with a sustainable advertising model will be able to lower or eliminate site pricing.
But this is only part of the pricing. News sites understand that the ability to allow linking to stories and columns is extremely valuable, but they don’t know how or whether to charge for this. Some form of micro-royalty payment might work, but then again it’s not my job to figure this out for them.
The other side of this, of course, is that many people insist on free access, and are willing to forego real news and rely on free commentary sites if they can’t get news for free.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
I’m confused. I saw this link over at Teh Orange where Markos snarked about losing readership by going behind a PAY wall and yet, I see no evidence of any paywall here.
I register at online newspapers I read regularly, it’s no big deal. Now, if they started charging money, particularly ones like the WaPo, I’d no longer be in need of what they think they supply.
Comrade Luke
@Arclite:
So is the quality of the “news” being provided. Maybe they should attack it from that angle, no?
JGabriel
MikeJ:
You’re stunned that businesses lobby Congress for new laws that will exempt them from old laws?
That’s so adorable.
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trollhattan
@Brachiator:
You sure it doesn’t mean the typical Times reader has two-and-a-half heads? Enquiring minds.
Feel
freeencouraged to DIAF, rupert.Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Lev: And I know I’m being a party pooper here but Oasis is from Manchester. And they are Manchester City supporters(at least the Gallagher brothers are), not Man. U.
DougJ
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
I think there’s a paywall that kicks in at some point too.
Steve M.
Nobody could have predicted….
JGabriel
@Brachiator:
No, it wouldn’t work at all. A link to a news story is not the story itself; it directs to the copyright owner’s own copy of it. The copyright owner can monetize it through advertising or a pay wall, but they can’t charge for a link – that would be like charging researchers for citations.
You don’t charge someone for providing free advertising to your site; you charge the customer when it results in a sale (or view).
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MikeJ
@JGabriel: I wasn’t stunned they’d do it, I was stunned they’d say it in public. There used to be a time when you did things like that in a back room somewhere and pretended to be ashamed of screwing the public.
fasteddie9318
@Arclite:
I agree. Now, if somebody would explain to the papers that those full time people they’re employing should be doing research and interviews, and following up on leads, we’d be on to something.
MikeJ
@Brachiator:
Google has already told Murduch that if he doesn’t like Google News linking to his newspapers they’ll be happy to never link to them again. For some odd reason nobody has taken them up on their generous offer.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
I’ve been a lifetime reader of the WaPo, since the 60s. 10-11 years ago if the Post had asked me to pay for their online product, I would have. I missed the paper after leaving DC.
Not anymore. Looking at their political reporting starting with the 2000 presidential campaign and then seeing the shitacular reporters that have cycled thru their newsroom over the years (people like Vandehei) not to mention the hacks that working there now (Kornblut, Bacon Bits, Murray, Kane and the rest of the Gang of Idiots), the Post should be paying me to provide hits to their site.
Fuck em. When they start providing a quality product and not simply bring on more Monica Hesse’s to comment on pop culture and the internet, I might consider paying for their product. Until them, fuck em, let em die. I’ll applaud.
And this from what was one of their lifelong, core readers.
El Tiburon
On a related note, part of the reason I enjoy commenting here (besides all of the stimulating dialogue and love for Hamsher) is the ease, simplicity and layout.
It is by-far the best layout IMO for commenting.
The worse has to be over at Salon.
JGabriel
@MikeJ: Google should implement removing links to Murdoch properties themselves – without waiting for a direct request from Murdoch – merely on the basis of offering a more accurate and reliable product to their audience.
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someguy
This is good. Anything that shuts up a fountain of right wing propaganda spew is a good thing.
Any chance we can convince Murdoch to put Fox behind a pay wall?
JWL
Like everyone on the planet, I like free stuff. But newspapers have to make money. For all the shortcomings of todays journalism, they’re too damn important to permit to go belly up. I haven’t a clue what the solution might be (assuming there is one), but I’d certainly support any federal legislation that would assure their survival (without gouging consumers). If that involved anti-trust exemption, so be it.
wobbly
Well, back in the day, when everybody had to pay for their newspapers…
The New York Times was required reading in my history/current events class in provincial Canandaigua, New York. I think we had to cough up fifty cents a week for the Sunday Times
and it arrived bundled up in Canandaigua Academy’s bookstore Thursday.
(Yes, there was financial aid available for the kids who could not afford the fifty cents. It mostly consisted of other kids kicking a few pennies into the tip jar, the schoolteacher actually covering the expense…)
Catsy
@Arclite:
Wake me when they start doing that, then.
Until they bother to start doing their job, I’m not about to pay them for what amounts to glorified stenography.
Remember folks, BugMeNot is your friend, and if you use Firefox there is an excellent plugin that allows you to right-click on the login field and “login using BugMeNot”. It’s great for free sites with pointless jump-though-hoops registration like Filefront or news sites.
Obviously it doesn’t (and shouldn’t) work for pay sites, so it won’t solve this paywall issue, but it will dramatically reduce the number of nuisance registrations you have to fill out.
licensed to kill time
@El Tiburon:
I agree, I always think of Balloon Juice as the Zen of Comment because of the elegant and uncluttered design.
Salon is a mess with those ‘letters’ (shades of dead trees) and a bajillion tiny numbers to click to see more comments.
wengler
Print media needs to die. It’s resource expensive and the mouthpiece of the establishment.
The reality of the American newspaper is that the industry has been declining for 40 years. Monopolization, buyouts, “streamlining” of news operations have made them shallow and worthless. Even small towns used to have competing newspapers. Now they are lucky to have a 4 page local section attached to some bigger daily.
Newspapers made a ton of money off classified ads that are now free to post and read on the internet. The print media fetishists just lament a loss of prestige and authority. Put up a paywall and watch your readers drop to sub-blog level. Good riddance to the forum for the rich and entitled.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Catsy:
This.
Everytime the Post gets called out on stenography, they always respond with some variation of “we’ve reported extensively on that” but of course never link to their “extensive” reporting.
They still seem to think that the quality of their product has *no* bearing on anyone’s willingness to actually pay for it.
Again, they’ve got their heads stuffed so far up their collective asses, they’re pretty much dooming their industry.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@wengler:
It’s not that simple. For one of the best looks at this:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2007/aug/16/goodbye-to-newspapers/
demimondian
For what it’s worth, Google sees about 9.5K subscribers to the times accessing it online:
https://www.google.com/adplanner/planning/site_profile#siteDetails?identifier=subscriptions.timesplus.co.uk&geo=001&trait_type=1&lp=true
Brachiator
@JGabriel:
I was using shorthand, but the problem remains. Linking or quoting or copying the entire story is a feature of the Internet, but a problem for news sites. It’s not quite the same thing as charging researchers for citations, but I see your point.
Sez who?
If I see a story I find interesting and send a link to someone or even copy and paste the entire story and email it, who says I shouldn’t have to pay something, especially if I am not a subscriber to the news site?
It could be kind of a Value Added Tax.
@MikeJ:
I’m sure that Murdoch is trying to come up with some scheme to “free himself” from google’s clutches.
wengler
@JWL
Really? You gotta be kidding me. The US media is pretty terrible, whether you are reading it on paper or on a computer screen.
trollhattan
@someguy:
Excellent idea! They can go head-to-head with HBO, fictional teevee category. Lord knows, they know them some fiction.
BudP
I think you should have McMegan check your maths.
Bill E Pilgrim
@El Tiburon:
Agree on both counts.
I’ve often felt like it was a weird reason to habituate a place, but I’ve said from the start that this is the main reason I gravitated here.
What would you call that, someone to whom precise political leaning was secondary to a pleasing and readable layout. A Fontbertarian or something.
JWL
Wengler: Terrible doesn’t begin to describe the depths to which U.S. journalism has sunk.
But reporters need to draw paychecks from sources other than corporate America, or we can kiss freedom of the press goodbye.
geg6
Well, at least the Times of London isn’t owned by one of those damn Jews, like the NYT or the self-haters at Journolist:
http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/our_jew_run_media_but_not_in_an_anti_semitic_way/
Say what you will about Rupert, but he’s not a damn, dirty Jew.
El Tiburon
@JWL:
I think they said the same thing about the pony express.
Newspapers are done. They are a day-late and a dollar-short. With the advent of devices like the Ipad, it is very easy to get the “newspaper experience” without a cumbersome laptop.
Now, I agree the type of reporting and investigation that newspapers and magazines do must continue, and it will.
When newspapers take their final gasp, it will be the last of the Bobos and Brooks and Friedmanns I hope.
DougJ
@El Tiburon:
I agree, it’s a great lay-out. I tried to copy it at the first blog I wrote for but I couldn’t explain to our tech expert what I wanted.
Comrade Kevin
There is no such newspaper.
maus
@El Tiburon:
Not as long as outrage junkies (such as myself) keep getting linked to them and compulsively reading.
However, if microtransactions work out, I’ll avoid spending 2 cents and 2 minutes reading their piece of shit columns.
geg6
@El Tiburon:
I agree completely with this.
When my mom lay dying back in 2001, she predicted the death of deadwood newspapers (her career was as a journalist, FWIW) and she, too, said it would be a good thing.
That was back in 2001. If she was still alive, she’d have been cheering their long-awaited deaths even before I did. They have done nothing but prove their irrelevance and worthlessness time and again since that time.
No one needs newsprint to commit journalism. Journalism happened before there WAS newsprint. It will continue to happen long after newsprint dies.
JGabriel
Brachiator:
You’re conflating linking with copying and redistributing. They’re two completely different actions.
Linking directs the user to the copyright owner’s own distribution/publication mechanism, which the copyright owners can choose to monetize as they wish.
Copying an entire article and distributing/publishing it without permission through your own or someone else’s site is already a copyright violation and doesn’t need further clarification.
What’s your purpose in conflating the two? Or is it accidental? It reads like a deliberate attempt to confuse the issue.
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El Tiburon
@DougJ:
You’ve been Breitbarted.
Also, Cole and his esteemed co-bloggers have put together a pretty good little place here where everyone feels free to put their feet up on the coffee table and peak in the fridge. And the commenters for the most part seem to be a decent lot.
@maus:
True enough. What fun would the world be without some of the classic take-downs of the Bobos/Friedmanns of the world here on the internet tubez.
JGabriel
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Actually, it never occurs to the denizens of WaPo that Serious People would question the quality of their product. To them, questioning the quality and value of The Washington Post is an automatic signifier of someone who is fundamentally unserious – of a crank, a blogger, or, god forbid, a liberal.
.
Brachiator
@JGabriel:
Different actions, same result. Murdoch’s paywall will not save the Times. Ironically, not putting up a paywall might have done so. There is a value in providing the widest possible access to news and information.
The concept of copyright violation in the age of the Internets is quaint, and increasingly irrelevant.
@El Tiburon:
More of the opposite is happening. Commentary and opinion are replacing news reporting. Many reporters have been laid off as news media evolves or does whatever it is doing. I don’t read as much about pundits being laid off or retiring.
justcorbly
The Times didn’t put up a paywall because they’re worried about someone violating their copyright. Anyone who wants to steal the site’s content can sign up.
No, The Times put up a paywall to make money. I think it’s a bad move, but if the revenues make the paper happy, they won’t care how many non-paying readers they lose.
JGabriel
@Brachiator:
Not at all. Copying and redistributing takes from the copyright owners their ability to monetize their own content. Linking generates more opportunites to monetize content. That’s pretty much the exact opposite results.
That’s what I and all of Murdoch’s critics here are saying. That while he might choose to monetize via a paywall, it’ll never work. He’d be better off trying to develop a profitable advertising model, and getting as many hits as possible via links from other sites.
Okay, actually, we’re not saying that, but we would be if we liked the guy. Since we don’t, we’re just pointing and mocking and laughing our asses off at his failure.
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JGabriel
@justcorbly:
Huh? That’s a distinction without a difference. Copyright IS Murdoch’s right to make money off of The Times’s content.
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justcorbly
@JGabriel:
I don’t think so. No necessary connection exists between revenue and copyright. If Murdoch wanted to give copies of The Times away gratis on street corners, it would not impact his copyright, just as giving it away free on the net did not impact his copyright.
Murdoch’s motivation is to make money. I’m sure copyright is a secondary issue for him.
Brachiator
@JGabriel:
Well, no. But it’s missing a larger point. In real terms, Murdoch’s experiment has greatly discouraged linking to his site, which apparently is OK with him. There is not much point in linking when a person is going to have to jump through registration hoops or become a subscriber to get to the actual content.
RE: Murdoch’s paywall will not save the Times. Ironically, not putting up a paywall might have done so.
Actually, I have a great deal of sympathy for other publications which are facing the same dilemma as Murdoch. But yeah, Murdoch himself, not so much.
But there is something a bit counterintuitive here that Murdoch doesn’t get and which there is no good model for. And that there is a value in being looked at and linked to by the maximum number of visitors, not just links from other sites.
frosty
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
I had the same experience with the Baltimore Sun. Had to go out of my way to find it for a couple of years when we lived in the DC suburbs. I dropped the subscription 2 years ago when I kept seeing Chicago Tribune and LA Times stories, with a nasty conservative slant. The Sun I used to read every day is long gone.
Peter Whiteford
Unfortunately for Rupert Murdoch he has a very high quality and free access competitor in the UK – i.e. the BBC.
In Australia we have a not so high quality but not too bad public competitor – the ABC – which rupert Murdoch doesn’t like
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/purepoison/2010/07/27/its-almost-as-if-theres-some-reason-why-news-ltd-publications-keep-damning-abc-news-24/
Martin
Yeah, I predicted this back in January, and I predicted that the iPad/Kindle would be a better driver of revenues because they allow the publications to introduce a new content model without destroying the old one. If you try the paywall and fail, getting your audience back is nearly impossible. If you try the iPad and fail, you haven’t lost your audience at all and you’re free to try something else.
Joel
If all the news sites go behind a paywall simultaneously, people will resort to information “piracy”, which basically already happens to some extent, in that many of us read the news filtered through blogs such as this one.
Linda Binda
Paywalls are a bit stupid at this point, but I wonder if online news sites had begun with them back in the day, if consumers would’ve found the idea more palatable?
I’m a bit wary of getting rid of the old-school newspaper. Sure, it’s a waste of trees, but does everyone have to get an iPhone, an electronic reader of some sort, or a laptop in order to view the news? Do I have to walk to the library to the computer café/center section in order to read the news? Do I have to watch mindless “human interest” stories on TV news programs in order to get news? Do I have to read what I want to know about on TV on some stupid marquée in order to hear about it? I like reading my news because I have the choice of sifting through bunk I’m not interested in enduring in order to read what I want to read, and television news doesn’t really give you that choice.
My point being, I shouldn’t have to own some expensive device in order to read the news in the future, in case Kindles and iPads and whatnot never go down in price well enough for them to be affordable for everyone, and aren’t some of these things made with materials people are fighting over in the Congo, anyways? I worry that when print newspapers go away, news won’t be *read* by poor people, anymore. Our choices will be Diane Sawyer and pointless “uplifting” stories about nice white ladies giving children teddy bears in India or Ethiopia or something (what can I say? I’m cynical), and Lindsay Lohan fucking it up, before I ever hear anything about what’s going on in Africa or somewhere; the other “choice,” being, to cough up $300-$1000+ for something with an internet browser and a keyboard to read a NYT article or a free blog.
Am I overreacting? Am my worries unfounded? I don’t mean to sound dumb, if so, but I wonder..