In another milestone (or maybe tombstone) in the effort of traditional print newspapers to make money from their online content, The New York Times announced that it will install a “paywall” for its web site. You can still read up to 20 articles per month for free, but beyond that you will be asked for a digital subscription of $15 per month.  The new plan will begin later this month for readers in Canada (hey, what did Canada ever do to the Times?) before rolling out everywhere else.

The comments—all 2,500 of them—from the Times’ online readers seem to fall into a few broad categories in descending order:

• That's too much money.
• See you later--I'll get my online news for free somewhere else.
• Sounds interesting, and can't wait to see how it turns out.
• The Times should drown in its ocean of liberal bias.

    
OK, that last one wasn’t a very big category, but there were a few. 

Is requiring an online paywall a good idea for newspapers?  It’s worked for the Wall Street Journal for years, but on the other hand, the WSJ started its online version with a subscription fee. The New York Times (and most other newspapers) has been giving away its work for free for more than a decade. One can certainly understand that consumers would balk at having to pay.  When the London Times instituted a paywall last year, online viewership dropped by 90 percent.

With more than 217 million online visitors last year, the New York Times has the second highest web traffic of any US newspaper (first is USA Today, third is the Wall Street Journal).  If 90 percent of the Times viewers flee, that would still leave them with 22 million annual online visitors.  Even if only a quarter of those end up paying the annual fee of $180 a year, that’s still close to a billion dollars in subscription revenue and a lot of desirable readers for advertisers.  Will it work? Who knows, but it will be fascinating to watch.

What I find most interesting, however, is the Times’ decision to maintain free online access for anyone who subscribes to the paper version.  This sends the unmistakable message that paper is still king, and that online is an “add on.” I still love walking to the end of my driveway every morning to pick the Times (and the Philadelphia Inquirer) and I refuse to do the Sunday Times crossword on a computer.  That said, paper is not the future of journalism—for the Times or anyone else. Seems like the Times still can’t quite cut that cord to its past.