[ghshephard]

Has the NYTimes.com paywall really influenced someone who read the website previously? When I'm browsing from chrome, I justly click Cmd+Shift+N prior to going there (launches incognito mode in chrome with a fresh set of cookies.)

When I'm browsing from my iPhone, I just click the little "x" at the top of the screen to stop the javascript from loading after the content has been downloaded - basically stops my iPhone from loading the paywall code, but loads all the content.

I always thought the paywall was really just to prevent the print subscribers from canceling their print subscription and switching over to web only - it convinces them they are getting value with their subscription. The Paywall itself was left deliberately leaky for people who only connected to it via the web.

But, based on the stats, it looks like there may be a large audience of casual subscribes that have been deterred from visiting the website - I'm sure that must be troubling for the NYT.

[minimax]

At $3.75/week it was less hassle for me just to pay up. Strangely I also noticed that I actually read a few more articles per week now that I'm paying for it. It's a great paper. I don't understand the aversion to spending a little bit of money to get a bunch of good content.

On a side note, the Android app used to be horribly buggy but a recent update seems to have fixed the issues. Anyone who was turned off before may want to give it another shot.

[thematt]

I think the aversion is that with the growth of the internet, news is becoming (or already has) commoditized. People look at the articles in the NYT and they don't see original journalistic content, they see something they can get from 50 other sites thru Google News. If the NYT wants to survive, they need to get back to their journalistic roots and increase the value proposition to potential customers...it has to be more than just "it's less of an inconvenience to just pay us."

[athst]

The fact is that, in a lot of cases, the news that the NYT creates is not commoditized. Often, they are one of the only, if not the only, organization covering a particular story. The problem is that now there are a lot of derivative news sites like HuffPo that leech off of their original content.

So, yeah, there are probably a lot of other places that you could get the same story, but in a lot of cases those other stories are just piggybacking on the NYT's original reporting.

Here's an example from a while ago: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/12/nytimes2...

[minimax]

The commenter I was originally responding to said that he switched to incognito mode or halted the page load to break through the paywall. If the NY Times had the same value as any other non-paywall site, why would he go to the trouble?

The NY Times is a good paper. The writing is good and I think the breadth of coverage is good too. They have started adding videos. Their interactive infographics are probably the best on the Internet. NYT stories frequently hit the frontpage of HN, probably more than any other U.S. newspaper website. What do you think they should do to increase the value of their content?

[Dylan16807]

I can easily see myself bothering with a few seconds of technical effort to get to a sub-par page. That page has the specific thing I happen to want to look at, but that itself doesn't mean it's very good. If quality was all that mattered people would only visit one site, the best one.

[jcampbell1]

I believe the paywall will help them get back to their roots of exceptional journalism. Journalists think differently when catering to an audience that pays $250/year for professional news vs. trying to get as many impressions as possible.

[ghshephard]

I love the NYT, totally agree with you. I just couldn't deal with the $240/year price to read it on my iPad and Browser, so I subscribed to the WSJ instead @$100/year.

Also, and I don't know if they ever fixed it, the NYT wouldn't include their business graphics/charts on their iPad edition. Very Lame. WSJ is good about including all their content on their (in my opinion) much more elegant iPad App.

[minimax]

I have a digital subscription to WSJ as well. It's worth every penny. NYT and WSJ probably complement each other more than they compete. I don't have an iPad so I can't really comment on the differences there.

[mrkurt]

You're not really representative of the majority of NYT readers. A minuscule number of them even understand what private browsing mode does, and even fewer realize how it interacts with the NYT paywall.

The paywall is price discrimination. A certain number of users are willing to pay for the NYT site, it's a way to let them do so.

[hvass]

And even fewer know the keyboard shortcut.

[18pfsmt]

The interesting numbers will come out in 11 days (i.e. 7/21 in the am) when they report earnings. Perhaps the traffic they've retained will be perceivably more valuable to their advertisers, and the decreased server load has allowed them to cut costs? For posterity, current financials: $8.98/share, Mkt Cap $1.23B, EPS $0.66, P/E 13.61. I'm curious enough that I'll probably listen to the earnings call.

EDIT: Sunday math; and should add shares: 147.18M.

[27182818284]

It affected my reading habits, just not on my laptop. When the paywall was first released, I suspected it wouldn't change anything for me, but I found myself hitting the limit quite a bit on my phone.

[yakto]

> When I'm browsing from my iPhone, I just click the little "x" at the top of the screen

Thanks for that tip! I cleared all my cookies once to get around it, but what a PIA to re-login to all my authenticated sites.