Here’s an interesting one. Steven Brill’s Journalism Online paywall system has put out a survey that claims newspapers using its paywall technology are noticing little difference in terms of traffic or advertising revenue.
The default belief is that web traffic evaporates as it is thought have done at The Times where it has put up a impenetrable anti-social media paywall. Not so elsewhere. Read More
Well that’s embarrassing. Political blogger Guido Fawkes is claiming today that he has more readers than The Times newspaper website, which has seen traffic fall through the floor since it locked its site behind an anti-social media paywall.
His claim is based on figures from Hitwise that suggest only 54,000 people are visiting The Times website each day while Guido has a readership of around 60,000. Read More
The FT reports that the Telegraph is to be the next major UK publisher to begin charging for its website or at least some of its content.
The plans to charge could be in place as earlier as next year following in the footsteps of rival News International that has The Times, The Sunday Times and The News of the World behind a paywall. Read More
The Customer Experience Impact 2010 report released this week n the US claims that 82% of US consumers abandon brands after they’ve had a bad consumer experience. I’m going to wager that not only did these people stop using the offending brand; they probably told as many people as they could about their bad experience. A lot of these people are now whinging about these bad experiences via Twitter. Read More
A revealing disclosure from assistant editor for online at The Times, Tom Whitwell, that the Times paywall is not interested in young people. They’re apparently not the target audience. Where exactly does The Times think it is going to get its next generation of online readers from?
More than that The Times does not seem concerned by its lack of connection with this group of readers. Isn’t that odd?
The New York Times Company is planning to erect a paywall around The Boston Globe’s content or at least some of it in the second half of 2011 after the paywall at its flagship newspaper goes live in January.
The plan will see the Boston Globe spread its content across two websites. The existing Boston.com site will remain free and it will be joined by the launch of a second subscription based pay site called BostonGlobe.com in a two site strategy that adds a fresh take on publisher’s efforts to make newspaper paywalls work. Read More
I’m a fan of the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal websites. I use them a lot in my day to day job.
On average, give or take, I probably look at a couple of stories a day from each and maybe as many as 40 or 50 stories a month. Both websites have paywalls, the original paywalls as it were, but I don’t subscribe. Read More
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. Read More
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation appears to be developing not one, but two teams to develop standalone app based or tablet newspaper products.
It had been reported last month Murdoch was planning to launch an app based newspaper project, which would be populist in tone and aligned with the New York Post. However, a leaked memo, posted online by Romenesko, from The Wall Street Journal’s managing editor Robert Thomson says that two senior editorial executives have been appointed from the WSJ and Down Jones to a “crucial” “WSJ/DJ Special Project”. Read More
Interesting piece in The New York Times about how top US newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, are balancing the use of traffic data on how stories perform with editorial judgement. Read More
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