[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.