What Does The New York Times Decision To Fold TimesSelect Say About The Death of Paid Content?

News Type: Opinion — Seeded on Wed Aug 8, 2007 12:44 PM EDT

Article Source: Publishing

us-news, content-distribution, business-august

Excerpt: "The New York Times has reportedly decided to abandon TimesSelect, its experiment with paid content on the web. This comes as no surprise since the pay wall was controversial, both internally and externally, from the beginning, but it's even less surprising when you look the at the fundamental economics of content in the digital media age that may soon put the final nail in the coffin of paid content.

The ability to charge for content in non-digital media like newspapers, magazines, and cable TV was based on a limited supply of content and monopoly control of distribution. The web and digital media have generated an overabundance of content — not just a spike in high-quality content but, more disruptively, and even larger spike in "pretty good" or "good enough" content. The web has of course utterly destroyed destroyed distribution monopolies. Anyone can create and distribute content on a meaningful scale.

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Scott (Scoop) Butki's Column, All of Newsvine
Groups: Mediavine, MSM Incinerator
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5.1

{"commentId":931834,"authorDomain":"sbutki"}

Scott (Scoop) ButkiDeleted

{"commentId":931841,"authorDomain":"sbutki"}

Scott (Scoop) Butki

I'm not sure this news - o fwhich I'm quite grateful and not just because I publicly ridiculed it a year ago - means the end of paid content but it means the failure
of one of the more public experiments.

{"commentId":931841,"threadId":"135360","contentId":"885221","authorDomain":"sbutki"}

1 vote

#2 - Wed Aug 8, 2007 12:51 PM EDT

{"commentId":931873,"authorDomain":"sbutki"}

Scott (Scoop) Butki

Epi was first (as far as I saw) to break this great news here but I like this piece for adding more context to it.

{"commentId":931873,"threadId":"135360","contentId":"885221","authorDomain":"sbutki"}

1 vote

#3 - Wed Aug 8, 2007 1:00 PM EDT

{"commentId":932505,"authorDomain":"SVForbes"}

ShaunV

Many commenters below have rightly observed that paid content still thrives in niches, which makes sense in economic terms — the smaller the niche, the more scarce good content is, so the more likely people are to pay for it.

I think this is true.

There are still many paid oportunitites for specialized topics.

{"commentId":932505,"threadId":"135360","contentId":"885221","authorDomain":"SVForbes"}

1 vote

#4 - Wed Aug 8, 2007 4:18 PM EDT

{"commentId":932570,"authorDomain":"sbutki"}

Scott (Scoop) Butki

Wouldn't porn count as paid content?

{"commentId":932570,"threadId":"135360","contentId":"885221","authorDomain":"sbutki"}

2 votes

#5 - Wed Aug 8, 2007 4:38 PM EDT

{"commentId":932587,"authorDomain":"SVForbes"}

ShaunV

I don't know.

I think publishers are likely to pay for writers to write about boring niche topics.

{"commentId":932587,"threadId":"135360","contentId":"885221","authorDomain":"SVForbes"}

1 vote

#5.1 - Wed Aug 8, 2007 4:41 PM EDT

{"commentId":932688,"authorDomain":"sbutki"}

Scott (Scoop) Butki

One of the ironies of my life lately is that because I write reviews and interviews for free at places like this it becomes harder for me to get paid to write reviews and interviews. It's ultimately self-defeating.
It's the one wounding dig Andrew Keen got in at me when attempting to attack the culture of the Internet in this interview.

{"commentId":932688,"threadId":"135360","contentId":"885221","authorDomain":"sbutki"}

#6 - Wed Aug 8, 2007 5:10 PM EDT

{"commentId":936208,"authorDomain":"sbutki"}

Scott (Scoop) Butki

I seeded two other pieces about this here

and here, where the WSJ might/should/could go free next

{"commentId":936208,"threadId":"135360","contentId":"885221","authorDomain":"sbutki"}

#7 - Thu Aug 9, 2007 11:44 PM EDT

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SCOTT (SCOOP) BUTKI

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What Does The New York Times Decision To Fold TimesSelect Say About The Death of Paid Content?

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