Don't you think they have spent a lot of time thinking this through, consulting with experts, and debating internally whether its been a good decsion? At least I hope they did.
If there's a chance they could successfully pull off a system where visitors pay a few cents for a quality article, why wouldn't it make sense for them to do it?
Their business model is under threat from 'free' stuff and so their response is to do what worked in the past, close the gates and set up a toll booth. Only this time it won't work, there are 100's of little side roads now, and you no longer have to use the 'main' road to get the news you are looking for.
People used to be 'loyal' to their newspapers, that's why the payments rolled in. That loyalty is very low, as long as the writing is good I really don't care whether I'm reading my stuff in German, French, English or Dutch and from what newspaper or other outlet it comes. So many choices, it's a delight. The AP feed relaying to fill the newspapers was a clever idea to save some money at the time but in the long term it backfired, it meant that there was less reporting in general, not that the reporters that were freed up were used to go digging.
It's only a matter of time before google or some other large party will hire a bunch of reporters directly and gets them to make the missing element (quality editorial content) and with the trouble at the regular newspapers I'm thinking that it will be a buyers market when they do.
WSJ charges for articles, seems to be working ok for them. Same with the New Yorker and IIRC Financial Times(?). I wouldn't be quick to dismiss this option.
As for the Google Times option, I think it'll bring about more problems than solutions. You don't build a quality newspaper by "hiring a bunch of reporters". There's a lot of accumulated knowledge in places like the NYT or WSJ. What we see from the web - from leading "reporters" investing in the field they're supposedly covering to opinion pieces by Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey - is far from encouraging.
WSJ and FT are specialized news and analysis that cannot be obtained elsewhere. Unless everyone in the newspaper industry starts charging all at once, the pay walls for other news sites will effectively go away.
IMO, this sort of thing is ultimately inevitable, and I don't think that the Internet is the ultimate cause (it's an accelerant, at best) -- I think that it's been getting harder for newspapers to compete with the depth of coverage provided "for free"* by television news organizations.
* When's the last time you paid a bill to CNBC or CNN? I don't pay an explicit bill for CBC Newsworld -- it's included in my cable package.
The cable model is interesting. Perhaps such sites could work out deals with ISPs - you'd pay a few more bucks each month and in return get free account on WSJ, NYT etc.
The 'at the same time' is telling. That's collusion.
AFAIK that is an excellent way to get into trouble with the law, and if it isn't then it should be.
You are supposed to come up with your price independently and without 'backtalk' in the boardroom.
If two gas stations get caught doing this they'll end up in serious trouble, I don't see why it should be any different when you're running newspapers.
Yeah, he's aware of that.. "And when the Justice Department lawyers arrive, briefcases in hand, to ask why America’s two national newspapers did these things in concert [..] you can answer directly: We never talked. Not a word. We read some rant in the Columbia Journalism Review that made the paywall argument. Blame the messenger."
Check out the article - it's the same guy who created The Wire, he's not a bad writer :)
To tell two people to collude does not give them any right to do so claiming there was no communication between them, effectively there was. They both could check if the other party was holding up their end of the deal on their respective websites. I highly doubt a judge would fall for it.
It's clever though, that's for sure. But like most typical layman attempts at 'hacking' the court system it would probably fail. Judges are not nearly as stupid as people seem to take for granted.
Sure, he's not really serious about that. But I think it's not improbable that many publications will start charging around the same time. The competition factor is overrated, IMHO - people who really want to read the Times will pay even when the Post is free, just as raising the print price to $2 increased revenues even though it's freely available online.
"Don't you think they have spent a lot of time thinking this through, consulting with experts, and debating internally whether its been a good decsion?"
Having worked at a few large companies, it's more likely that some executive got scared, hired a few toadies to tell him what he wanted to hear, then put in place a "plan" that he'd already decided and that is doomed to failure.
If there's a chance they could successfully pull off a system where visitors pay a few cents for a quality article, why wouldn't it make sense for them to do it?