Rupert Murdoch’s paywall test doing (slightly) better than expected

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105k number of subscribers the Times of London has for its paywall-enforced Web sites
100k number of print subscribers who also get online subscriptions as part of the deal
42% the decline in the paper’s online traffic, which is much less than the 90 percent estimated source

» So is it a success? Depends on your definition of success. While the paper certainly is doing better than other strict paywall models (looking at you Newsday, which we did a whole tongue-in-cheek series on a while back), it isn’t exactly killing it. What the 105,000 number doesn’t tell you is that only half of those subscribers are regular readers – which, for a paper of its size, is kinda low. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when the New York Times goes paywall starting next year.

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

02 Nov 2010 10:29

Leading futurist Ross Dawson has a message for you print jockeys out there: Find another medium that doesn’t involve dead trees. The dude created a handy-dandy chart explaining how we won’t read newspapers in the U.S. in another seven years. But on the plus side, if you’re a member of the Argentinian press, your papers will still be relevant into 2039. Food for thought. Plus this guy is a futurist which means he can see into the futureeeeeeeeeeee. oooh. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

I think expectations were unreasonably high for Barack Obama. He took over the presidency, Harry, facing the worst set of problems not of his own making that any American president has faced in the last 50 years.
Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell • Explaining (on “The Early Show” with Harry Smith and Maggie Rodriguez) the big problem Democrats have faced over the last two years. They have a president who has actually done stuff but the American people are either unaware or misinformed about what it is he did. (See: The Obama tax cuts nobody felt.) “We’ve got to learn to explain and communicate what we’ve done and what we want to do a lot more clearly and a lot better than we have,” Rendell said. While it’s too early to say whether or not Rendell’s assessment means big losses tonight (let the polls speak for themselves, kids), it’s one of the more honest assessments of the communication problems the Democrats have had recently. source

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Just as the conditions promising at least a pretty bad Democratic year have been with us for some time, the uncertainty has been with us all along as well, like a virus with an exceptionally long latency period; on Tuesday, we’ll see which of the polls it has infected.
FiveThirtyEight guy Nate Silver • Offering a key piece of final analysis that we should probably take into the elections today. While the polls have largely remained consistent about how many seats the Democrats will lose and the Republicans will gain, it’s good to keep at least a little bit of perspective no matter how you lean. Remember, back in 1994 the analysts were relatively consistent too, but in the end, the Republicans did way better than most of them expected – by a long shot. No matter the case, you should probably get out there and vote your heart out for both the ballot measures and the candidates – unless you live in DC and know the results of every election already. We’ll have lots of key results from our non-existent glass-enclosed nerve center at a late-night coffee shop in Dupont Circle tomorrow night. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink