This report has been making the rounds: (via)
Aside from wondering who will pay more than the cost of a Wall Street Journal subscription in order to subscribe to the New York Times, my biggest question right now is how the NY Times spent a reported $40-50 million writing the code (Bloomberg; other sources are consistent). Google was financed with $25 million.
When I was (shameless plug) donating blood last weekend, I was thinking about the exhortations I’ve been hearing about the Times’ paywall, which sometimes remind me of the same reasoning used when discussing charity. I should support the Times, I’m told, because they’re one of the few sources of real journalism in this country, so my subscription goes to a good cause.
That may be true, but if I’m going to evaluate the for-profit New York Times as a charitable organization, then I’m going to have to think about the history of gross mismanagement at that place. Spending $40 million on a paywall that shouldn’t cost even $4 million is just the latest in a long string of stupidities that include a corporate jet and a lavish, billion dollar headquarters built while everyone but the Sulzberger family recognized that newspaper profit margins were in big trouble.
When I give blood or money to a charity, I avoid those run by a known fuckup bringing down $6 million in annual compensation. When I buy a product, I judge the value of the product against the competition in the marketplace. A New York Times digital subscription is not worth $34/month, given the competing sources of news available.
The New York Times is a top-notch newspaper that I’d be happy to donate to if it were run as a non-profit with reasonable expenses. The New York Times Company is a grossly mismanaged, debt-laden, for-profit entity, and their product is too expensive.
Gin & Tonic
But how much will it cost to move this thing to the Daily Beast? Huh?
Joe Beese
Well-argued post.
JPL
Mistermix, Why don’t you tell us how you really feel. Don’t hold back.
rootless_e
$40M is a big number.
OT can I pimp these two essays on the difference between “progressive” and liberal economics?
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2011/03/criticism-from-left-or-republican-spin.html
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2011/03/tim-geithner-continues-to-uh-make-money.html
low-tech cyclist
The New York Times is a top-notch newspaper that I’d be happy to donate to if it were run as a non-profit with reasonable expenses.
I second that: if the NY Times wants to reorganize as a nonprofit, with the appropriate streamlining of their operations (especially in the executive suite), I’ll support it. But as long as it’s the Sulzberger family’s private toy, forget it.
There’s no reason why our major newspapers shouldn’t be reorganized as nonprofits. They’re losing money hand over fist, and their best hope is to find a constituency that thinks it’s important to keep them alive, and serve that constituency in a way that brings in sufficient revenues and contributions to keep the whole thing going (at expense levels that make sense given their mission).
If the Washington Post went nonprofit, of course, they’d go under overnight, because there aren’t enough Villagers to keep them viable, even if they give daily blowjobs to each and every one (as opposed to merely weekly, like they do now).
tom p
amen
suzanne
Word to that. (Though Renzo Piano DID do an amazing job with the building.)
Captain Haddock
As as web developer I wholeheartedly support this sort of insane overspending and wish my clients could make the same budgetary decisions.
geg6
@low-tech cyclist:
Co-sign. I agree with everything in this comment.
salacious crumb
id rather be caught torturing puppies than give my money to Bill Keller and the likes who have spent a lifetime blowing whichever administration is in power. Their blatant refusal to use the word torture, when even Bush officials have admitted using it, sitting on news to make the govt happy etc makes me wonder why anyone with any self esteem should bother giving those bastards any money
Folderol & Ephemera
@Captain Haddock:
I know someone who knows someone who worked on the paywall for the NYT. Just bought a house.
(truly!)
LGRooney
We need a Guardian US. Non-profit, news-driven, and opinionated on the
liberalfact-based side.Paula
The NYT’ readership will take a hit and might lose some of it’s relevance. I never read the NYT until the Internet. I’m glad that I can still read 20 articles for free but I won’t get a subscription because most of the paper isn’t written for ppl in fly over country.
I hope that they can figure out a successful business model (HuffPo), because it would be a shame if they fail. Many companies have failed because they didn’t adapt to the new digital age.
Omnes Omnibus
@Paula: They make a halfway decent buggy whip.
Comrade DougJ
I agree. Also too they could own a big chunk of google but turned it down around the time of the ipo.
Michael D.
I subscribe for the travel section alone.
I don’t care who runs the place or how much he spends on private jets and executive suites. If it’s a good product, I’ll buy it. And I do.
Not that you have to pay for it anyway…
EDIT: By the way, I hate the pricing structure they use. It’s stupid to charge based on what device you use. Just tell me how much you want me to pay to access The New York Times. Don’t break it down by Tablet, Smartphone, Laptop, etc. In a world of stupid, that’s about the dumbest thing.
Loneoak
The thing that is really holding me back is the differential pricing for viewing on multiple platforms. Double the price to ALSO read it on my iPad and phone? Fuck that noise. I think I could stomach $16/mo to read it digitally, but digitally means cross-platform in 2011. Hell, it meant cross-platform in 2005, too.
debbie
That’s an appalling amount of money to spend, but doubtless the biggest chunk of it went to consultants. They’ll prove to be the death of civilization.
Woodrow L. Goode, IV
My #1 issue is that I have a vision disability and I can’t read a newspaper on a smartphone (unless I want to do it 15 words at a time). But I can’t pay for PC access only– I have to contribute money for a feature I’m not going to use.
#2 is that the Times regularly publishes false stories– or withholds facts– at the request of the government. I will not pay to enable someone to lie to me.
I might be able to reconcile their extreme deference to power– or occasional sloppiness because they rush things into print without vetting. But when you deliberately choose not to tell me the truth, there’s no way you’re getting my money. I can get that for free from Faux News.
Cat Lady
Fuck the Sulzbergers. They’re just the Kochs with better publicity.
El Cid
I don’t think you need a multi-billion dollar media empire in order to pay some good reporters, and the lawyers they may need.
Other countries seem to be able to have newspapers that get by and do very good investigations, even at the risk of assassination by the powers they go against. And they don’t have much money at all.
Maybe if investigative journalism can take place in Mexico or Colombia without needing a skyscraper, we might be able to do that too.
NonyNony
@debbie:
Blaming consultants is like blaming lawyers – it’s easy to do, but when you do you miss the truth. Consultants suck up money because management spends it. Don’t blame consultants for doing the job – blame management for being morons.
And in this case – if the Times really actually-factually DID spend $40 million dollars on paywall software that can be defeated by 3 lines of greasemonkey script … I’m not sure I want to give them ANY money. I’d advise the reporters and editors working for the paper to maybe be looking into other job prospects. Because when a company gets to that particularly special kind of stupid, it’s time to be making sure your parachute is packed up and ready to go.
Hillary Rettig
Mistermix, Great post. But i believe the nonprofit arm of the NY Times would be
http://www.propublica.org/
or the investigative arms of the Nation, Mother Jones, etc.
It would be so much more effective to donate right to those, and you know your money wouldn’t be going to support (a) the Sulzbergers, (b) the culture of media mediocrity that spawned Judy Miller, (c) stories about the oppression of the rich.
Barry
@low-tech cyclist: “If the Washington Post went nonprofit, of course, they’d go under overnight, …”
It’s subsidized by the Kaplan Test Company. The Post is basically an advertising/lobbyist/PR arm of Kaplan.
debbie
NonyNony: They’re both culpable.
Emma
Ditto. To all of it.
kwAwk
I think this misses the point. The point is that it is up to the New York Times to decided when, how and how much to charge for the services and products they provide, and indeed it is up to you to decide whether to purchase the product or not.
Much of the reaction in the blogosphere seems to revolve around the reaction of ‘how dare the New York Times put up a paywall!’.
Pay for it or don’t pay for it.
Joe Beese
@salacious crumb:
This is why I cackle with schadenfreude when my local NPR station’s hourly fundraising goals go so spectacularly unmet.
You jerks want me to think about the quality of news that NPR delivers? That’s exactly what I’m doing.
The Fool
Fuck the New York Times.
They’re a top-notch newspaper that peddles lies and distortions. They did it on Nicaragua. They did it on Iran-Contra. They did it on supply-side economics. They did it on the stolen 2000 election. And they did it, famously, on Iraq. And they do it every time they prsent a demonstrable lie in he said-she said format or report a Republican atrocity “balanced” by some bullshit purported Democratic analog.
Fuck the New York Times. With journalists like that, who needs propagandists?
Tom Levenson
I’m so torn about this. I want the NYT available to me, so I’ll probably pay. But I am astonished at how badly they run the store over there, and I can’t stand paying for even the tiniest bit of Bobo and Chunky Bobo’s salary…so what to do?
Tom Levenson
@Barry: This is true, but only up to a point. Washingtonpost.com is in the black. It’s the dead tree version that sucks wind.
befuggled
@Captain Haddock: I suspect they’re the kind of customer you’d regret. Sure, they’ll spend $40 million dollars, but I have this feeling their developers had to do $80 million of work to get it.
Hillary Rettig
@Tom30
>…so what to do?
Just say no. If you believe the NYT is part of the problem, just say no. Otherwise, through your support of them, you yourself become part of the problem.
There are so many real journalists out there, real heroes, who hold themselves to high standards, work on a shoestring, live in penury, etc. Not just here, but abroad. And they help support real social justice and social change. Please send your money to them instead.
Amir_Khalid
@Paula: If your scruples allow it, there’s a thing called NYTClean that you can put in your bookmarks toolbar. It clears away the “please pay up” message the Times puts on top of the article, so you can keep on reading as much as you want without paying. It works, and I’ve been using it for the past couple of days.
Michael D.
@kwAwk:
Do you think? I don’t. I think the reaction is mostly, “Does the Times REALLY think this is a good idea? And seriously, $40 million dollars for something that is so easy to get around?”
The news is that the Times has a paywall. The scandal is that is doesn’t do anything for the $40 million it cost them. The truly outrageous story is that there are people in senior management that are completely ok with this.
I don’t think anyone disagrees that the Times can charge what it wants for its content.
Amir_Khalid
@befuggled #32: When you look at the outcome, i.e. a paywall defeatable with just a few lines of code, it seems a stretch to say that any work of real value was done.
NonyNony
@Michael D.:
I do. I think that the Times can try to charge what it wants for its content. But whether they succeed at that or not given the Internet is a different story.
Honestly, it looks to me like the Times is trying to play the guilt card – put enough of a barrier up that those who can be convinced to pay will pay, but don’t actually shut out any eyeballs because, hey, advertising dollars! That’s the only sense I can make of this scheme.
But if that’s the case – why spend so much goddamn money on the paywall? Just about any script-jockey could have created the javascript they use to guilt trip people for far less than $40 million dollars. I assume that they also want a database of people for whom the guilt-trip works on, but even taking into account that back-end they shouldn’t have had to spend $40 million dollars.
drew42
What the hell? I could have probably built it for $4,000.
And I’d throw in a few sexual favors if they paid me $40,000.
dr. bloor
@Folderol & Ephemera:
It’s probably a good thing he didn’t build it himself.
Omnes Omnibus
@dr. bloor: It is quite possible that the designers built exactly what the NYT asked them to build. Is it their fault if the NYT asked them to build something stupid?
quickly
this thread is a model of complete comity and agreement. where’s joe from lowell when we need him?
Pongo
I also have had trouble with the ‘it’s the best source out there and you should feel guilted into paying for it’ meme. I used to subscribe to the Times, until they became 90% unreadable during the Bush II admin. (Final straw–hiring Bill Kristol for analysis despite his track record of truly stupid commentary and totally wrong analysis. It seemed to me that they were courting the mouth-breathing troglodyte demographic to boost sales and I didn’t want to support that initiative). After 25+ years as a subscriber, I simply couldn’t justify it any more.
Granted, they may be what counts as excellence in journalism by today’s print standards and they certainly do have some talented and dedicated journalists, but ‘slightly better than the other crap that’s out there’ is not a ringing endorsement and I can’t understand the pressure being put on us to pay for slightly better crap. I paid for 25 years and would gladly have gone on paying for a product that had lived up to its past glory. It just simply doesn’t. I can understand others wanting to subscribe and more power to you. I can’t understand the undercurrent of moralizing directed at those of us who don’t.
Barry
@befuggled: “@Captain Haddock: I suspect they’re the kind of customer you’d regret. Sure, they’ll spend $40 million dollars, but I have this feeling their developers had to do $80 million of work to get it.”
In addition, that might have been developers A doing $20 million worth of work, getting $5 million for it upon cancellation (due to management dithering), then cycling their way through a dozen development groups, some of who got paid even less, and after long enough delays to drive them out of business….
befuggled
@Amir_Khalid: The value of the finished product is an entirely separate issue. In the software world, it’s unfortunately not at all uncommon for a lot of money to be spent on development for a finished product that doesn’t work. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a cost. Even if you’re paying developers to spin their wheels, you’re still paying the developers.
Depending on what the contract looked like, the web development firm could have made out like bandits or lost their shirt.
Xenocrates
I have been on a New York Times “diet” since the 28th. I agree that the cost(s) of a digital subscription are waaay too high, and frankly, I have simply switched to Google News. Nice loophole ya got there, Pinch, wonder if I’m the only one driving my pickup through it. I did ponder getting a weekender sub just to save some money, but not subscribing has been the best thing I’ve done for my wallet in a long time.
sparky
i cannot believe that i am taking the Times’ side here, but i am.
first, for all of those who are complaining about not using the word “torture”: while i agree with you, the Times is the paper of the Establishment, not blogostan. asking it to be out in front on issues like this is, in a way, silly.
second, what exactly would replace the NYT? pro publica and its ilk do a great job, but they are nowhere near capable of putting out what the NYT puts out every single day. is there another organization in the US, free or for profit, that puts out this level of mostly well-sourced news?
finally, i don’t think it’s fair to compare the Sulzbergers to your average CEO these days. they signed on to be newspaper owners, and the ground has shifted under their feet. sure they may be lousy businesspeople, but that’s not the point. a sharp businessman which people seem to want here would destroy the paper in pursuit of profit. See, for example, Sam Zell and what happened to the Tribune and the LA Times. so i prefer the inept newspaper folks who are trying to keep the paper afloat rather than smashing it for the sake of a few bucks. that said, if they flimflammed themselves, well then i have less sympathy.
Hungry Joe
Allow me, a former newspaperman (20 years) on a fairly large daily, to offer an explanation of newspaper management:
For more than half a century, the presses divided time between printing newspapers and (all but) printing $100 bills. The profit margin was staggering; there was no need for the people running the show to be particularly bright or talented, and for the most part — with the occasional exception, of course — they weren’t. Then, when the crunch came, and newspapers needed capable, visionary leadership, it simply wasn’t there.
JohnR
I don’t feel the need to be scrupulously fair here; Hell, I used to be a Republican. *ahem*: How dare you say bad things about the Invisible Hand Of The Free Market? Your job is to pay what you’re told to pay without whining. It’s not like you’re anyone important, for God’s sake. Support your betters. They deserve it.
Church Lady
I wonder how many people are actually paying for it in the first year? I got an email from Lincoln offering me a free one year subscription. I have no idea why Lincoln picked me out, since I don’t own a Lincoln. Hell, it’s not a car brand I’d even consider. But what the heck, I get to read the Times free for the next year!
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@low-tech cyclist: I agree as well. Sigh.
Nutella
@sparky:
I take it you’re recommending that we all shut up and pay up to read shameless lies like “It’s not torture when we do it!” since this is the Establishment position and we should consume the Establishment view even when we know it to be a lie.
I think I’ll pass.
Persia
The biggest thing this whole debacle did was get me to realize how little I actually read the times. I doubt I’ll hit the paywall even without any cheating tactics.
I used to get it every weekend. It’s kind of depressing.
El Cid
@sparky: As individuals, we are under no obligation to discuss a newspaper as its owners or others would prefer to label it, or as it’s realistically categorized in relation to aspects of the US power structure. We can speak about things as how they are in quite objective terms. Newspaper owners and publishers who insist on using the word ‘torture’ for other nations but not this government can be evaluated in terms of how this adheres to logical standards for ‘journalism’, i.e., reporting, analysis, and commentary, as we can do for any publication or broadcaster of any size and wealth.
Calouste
@sparky:
Isn’t it a bit scary that in a country of more than 300 million people there is just one (1) organization that puts out decent (not excellent, decent) well-sourced news?
BombIranForChrist
I work in duh video games industry, and that is about the size of a huge AAA game development cycle that lasts 3 or so years.
Web services, although not necessarily easy, do not require highly specialized artists, engineers, audio specialists, etc. etc., so I am really struggling to figure out WTF they spent all that money on.
Something tells me that if you could follow that thread, you would have a huge story, and possibly scandal, on your hands. There is something very wrong with that figure.
zuzu (not that one, the other one)
@Tom Levenson:
Try your local library. Don’t you work for a university?
hal lewis
Isn’t this the newspaper that check the government before publication? Can’t use the word torture. Held up the wiretap store until George Bush was re-elected.
That’s the one. To my mind it’s not a newspaper. No newspaper that deserves the name would check with the government before publishing a story that effects it’s readers.
Anne Laurie
@Tom Levenson:
Well, you could always use the ‘conscience clause’ of subscribing to the print version, having it delivered to a local school or nursing home, and still keeping your online access. Would sharing the news parts with people who wouldn’t otherwise have access help?
@Church Lady:
Nine months, actually (‘the rest of the year’), if yours was the same advermail all us high-click registered users got. But, heck, *I* don’t even have a drivers license — that’s the eternal fine-mesh problem in the advertising industry!