Dear New York Times: The Pay Wall Was Only Half the Problem
A couple of weeks ago, the New York Times removed the pay wall in front of its TimesSelect service, which controlled access to much of the paper's archives and its popular columnists like Thomas Friedman and Frank Rich.
Context & Ripple Effects
The New York Times pulled down the TimesSelect pay wall roughly two weeks before this piece, freeing its archives and star columnists like Thomas Friedman and Frank Rich from subscription-only access. Read/WriteWeb's argument is that the wall was only half the service's problem — the product itself, not just the access restriction, fell short.
The move lands mid-debate: a MediaShift reader roundup days earlier found people willing to pay for niche content and ad-free newspaper sites, which frames the critique — if payment belongs anywhere, it is in narrowly valuable products, not a blanket toll across op-ed columns.
First-order effects
- Friedman, Frank Rich, and the rest of the TimesSelect columnist roster become fully linkable and searchable, converting subscription revenue into open-web advertising and search-driven traffic overnight.
- The Times forfeits whatever recurring revenue TimesSelect generated, betting that ad yield on freed archive and opinion pages outearns the toll.
Second-order effects
- Rival papers still charging for columnists or archives must now defend their own walls against a free alternative from the most-linked newspaper brand, pressuring them to justify or drop similar tolls.
- Advertisers gain newly opened premium inventory — established byline pages with loyal audiences — competing for budgets that might otherwise fund niche paid products.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, newspaper pricing splits structurally: general-interest opinion and archives drift to ad-supported openness while genuine payment migrates to niche, high-value products — exactly the split readers told MediaShift they would accept.
- A failed blanket wall becomes the reference case publishers weigh when designing finer-grained access schemes, making product quality rather than mere exclusivity the test of what readers will pay for.
The trend: Newspaper economics are moving from blanket subscription walls toward ad-supported openness, with willingness-to-pay concentrating in niche content rather than star-columnist access.