I wrote last week that I don’t have a problem with The Times paywall just its implementation. One of its biggest failing appeared to be shutting its once popular blogs behind the paywall.

I’ve suspected it is doing them no good and a couple of news tidbits have I have seen over the last day or so add weight to this idea. One of those morsels came last night from a Times member of staff speaking at an event.

Julian Burgess, an editorial developer at The Times, was speaking at the Frontline Club’s event on data journalism. During his ‘Data skills and techniques for journalists’ presentation he said they had been running a blog [Times Lab Blog] “before our paywall went up and it’s not alive anymore [this drew a big laugh] really”.

Burgess (@aubergene), who is an editorial developer at the Times, works alongside journalists, including Jonathan Richards, to help them use data and bring it to life. On the blog front, at least, life appears to have been squeezed out of the blogs.

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Upadate – just saw this job ad…he liked The Times paywall so much he’s off

“The Times is looking for a brilliant developer to replace Julian Burgess when he joins the AP in New York.

“It’s an interesting and varied role which involves end-to-end development on multiple platforms for both standalone applications and news-related projects.

“If you’re interested, or know anyone who might be, please drop me a line at jonathan.richards@thetimes.co.uk

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Add to that a post on Harry’s Place today about another Times blog – this time Oliver Kamm’s. Michael Ezra wrote that he had been concerned about the effect the paywall would have on the blogosphere and the fact that once the paywall went live the paper’s content including its bloggers disappeared from the open web.

“I lamented the fact that Oliver Kamm’s blog was going to disappear behind a pay wall. It was a blog that I enjoyed reading. Kamm agreed with the decision: ‘This blog is part of the newspaper’s output, and I’m fortunate to be paid to write it, along with the rest of my journalistic output’. I concluded my own view by suggesting that for those that settle arguments using Google, ‘the day that The Times starts charging for content will be the day that Oliver Kamm ceases to exist’.

“An article has been published today on the Guardian’s Comment is Free website about Howard Zinn’s book, The Bomb. Looking below the line, I notice that Oliver Kamm has been quite active in the discussion. I do not know what Rupert Murdoch would make of this, but it certainly pleased me. Reports that Oliver Kamm might have ceased to exist were greatly exaggerated. I apologise.”

Interesting that Kamm should appear on the Guardian’s site and prove as it were that as blogger he is still alive and posting because unless you were a Times subscriber you would not be aware of him.

Another Times blogger told me recently that “I don’t really bother writing that much- its not worth” while another said that traffic and comments had dipped. Early on as the paywall was approaching several Times bloggers left .

It looks to me as if The Times paywall is killing its blogs slowly by lack of a wider audience. A totally different story from the Wall Street Journal whose bloggers there sit and thrive outside the paywall. It has some big active blogs including the Wealth Report, SpeakEasy, AllThingsD and MediaMemo among others.

So how comes I can go on the WSJ blogs read the posts and comment, but I can’t even see what blogs The Times has. Like The Times, the WSJ is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation so I really don’t understand the divergence in strategy. Maybe someone can explain it.

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