Biblioklept on Patience (After Sebald)
Stealing from Conversational Reading
This post on “How Harper’s was doomed by its paywall” doesn’t really make sense. The author argues that
It would be overly simplistic, but partially accurate, to ascribe the current crisis at Harper’s to the fact that its website is mostly hidden behind a paywall. I can’t even remember when I let my subscription lapse, but the magazine simply isn’t on my radar screen these days: with the exception of its current highly controversial Guantanamo story (which, notably, Harper’s put outside the paywall), pieces from Harper’s simply don’t get talked about.
I can’t say how often pieces on Harper’s website do or don’t get talked about, but the idea that most of the site is behind the an onerous pay wall is absurd. Yes, most of the archives are, but archives aren’t exactly the kind of hot-button, talked-about articles that are being implicated here. And c’mon . . . you can get 2 years of access for like $12. That’s incredibly cheap.
But even more than that, as I mentioned earlier, most of the interesting reporting going on at Harper’s these days is available for free on the site’s blog, and that does get linked pretty often on the political blogs I read. Add in the fact that Harper’s does put about 1/3 of each new issue for free online–and has been pretty good about freeing up articles once they do catch on–and I don’t see how you can say that a pay wall is doing it that much damage.
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Archives are where news sites generate most of their ad revenue. They’ve matured in the Google system and are most likely net readers with a propensity to click. Regular readers of a site are known to have “ad blindness” – as in they know where the content is and simply skim right over adverts in a desire to stay on the site.
Not arguing against the Harper’s Paywall, just saying that it’s probably costing them more money than it’s bringing in.
Bradley,
On this I’m totally with you. I can’t believe that at $6/year Harper’s wouldn’t do better to just open up the archives and earn from ads.
That’s different, though, from the point above, which was in regards to not being in the conversation because of a pay wall.
What media companies need to do is to start creating content-oriented web ads; snippits of articles or top headlines. The tech is all there for this sort of thing but I don’t see it, not much at least. Most of their ads think in print.