Comments on: Play Paywall!, the new web game sweeping the newspaper industry

By: thegrid

thegrid — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 03:12:00 +0000

The Grid is also fun http://celtruler.com/games/thegrid/

By: Through The New York Times’ Semipermeable Membrane | Numbers Run

Through The New York Times’ Semipermeable Membrane | Numbers Run — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 15:30:12 +0000

[...] Nieman Lab’s excellent Paywall Game did a good job at estimating the distribution of the Times’ online readership (via [...]

By: The New York Times Introduces a Paywall « Congressman Frank J. Guarini Library Blog

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 13:52:09 +0000

[...] have instituted paywalls. The Times is the largest paper to do so. A Brief History of Paywalls, Play Paywall! (Nieman Journalism Lab), a comparison of newspaper paywalls, and paywall articles from [...]

By: The New York Times Pay-Ramp « RJI

The New York Times Pay-Ramp « RJI — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 19:29:12 +0000

[...] Stray from the Associated Press pointed to a Times pay wall calculator which is a ton of fun to play with (if you’re a numbers nerd). And this calculator gets right [...]

By: It’s official! And kind of expensive! Here are the details of The New York Times’ new stab at a paywall » Nieman Journalism Lab » Pushing to the Future of Journalism

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 16:20:41 +0000

[...] — Jonathan Stray’s game of Paywall!, a to-fence-or-not-to-fence decision-maker [...]

By: Quem quer jogar o jogo do paywall? : Ponto Media

Quem quer jogar o jogo do paywall? : Ponto Media — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 09:04:19 +0000

[...] pela cabeça cobrar por conteúdos noticiosos no meu site, não deixaria de jogar primeiro o jogo do paywall, que o Nieman Journalism Lab colocou ontem [...]

By: Internet Strategy for News Organisations » Session 5: The Economics and Business of Online Journalism

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 14:41:24 +0000

[...] Play Paywall! The new web game that’s sweeping the newspaper industry , Jonathan Stray, Nieman Journalism Lab [...]

By: Internet Strategy for News Organisations » Blog Archive » Course Syllabus

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 07:20:54 +0000

[...] Play Paywall! The new web game that’s sweeping the newspaper industry , Jonathan Stray, Nieman Journalism Lab [...]

By: This Week in Review: What the iPad might do for news, a leaky New York Times paywall, and the Newsday 35 | Mark Coddington

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:51:06 +0000

[...] want to do some number-crunching of your own, the Nieman Journalism Lab’s Jonathan Stray has a nifty little tool for [...]

By: Jeff Israely: Lessons learned in Year 1 of a magazine correspondent’s (would-be) online news startup » Nieman Journalism Lab

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:51:38 +0000

[...] possible, and figure out, as best you can, how it will apply to what you are creating. Look ahead. Crunch the numbers. Get advice. And then choose. I’m about to start mine over, nearly from [...]

By: Paid Content – A Viable Business Model for Online Publishers? | Angus Robinson's Blog

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 05:01:57 +0000

[...] you’re still on the fence, here’s a great little calculator to figure out how much money you could potentially lose or gain by imposing a [...]

By: Make your own game of Paywall! » Nieman Journalism Lab

Make your own game of Paywall! » Nieman Journalism Lab — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:01:34 +0000

[...] now, many thousands of you have had a chance to play Paywall!, the web game sweeping the newspaper industry. But some of you have asked whether you could rewrite [...]

By: Medial Digital» Linktipps Neu » Linktipps zum Wochenstart (45)

Medial Digital» Linktipps Neu » Linktipps zum Wochenstart (45) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 17:38:37 +0000

[...] Play Paywall!, the new webgame sweeping the newspaper industry [...]

By: Pay wall games » News Future Now - News transformation from the trenches

Pay wall games » News Future Now - News transformation from the trenches — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:21:39 +0000

[...] Stray has posted a tool at the Nieman Labs site to model the financial impact on newspapers that put up pay walls. He uses NY Times data to critique their recently announced [...]

By: This Week in Review: What the iPad might do for news, a leaky New York Times paywall, and the Newsday 35 » Nieman Journalism Lab

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 15:02:42 +0000

[...] to do some number-crunching of your own, the Nieman Journalism Lab’s Jonathan Stray has a nifty little tool for [...]

By: Finance Geek » The New York Times Paywall Will Be ‘Revenue-Neutral’

Finance Geek » The New York Times Paywall Will Be ‘Revenue-Neutral’ — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 22:01:43 +0000

[...] How Much Will A Paywall Get You? [...]

By: The New York Times Paywall Will Be ‘Revenue-Neutral’ | India News Blog, Latest News From India, Latest Blogs From India

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:57:55 +0000

[...] How Much Will A Paywall Get You? [...]

By: Newsday Tries To Put Positive Spin On Pathetic Online Subscriptions | India News Blog, Latest News From India, Latest Blogs From India

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:37:18 +0000

[...] How Much Will A Paywall Get You? [...]

By: Newsday Executive: Tiny Subscriptions To Our Paywall Don’t Matter | India News Blog, Latest News From India, Latest Blogs From India

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:06:56 +0000

[...] How Much Will A Paywall Get You? [...]

By: Juega Paywall! Lo difícil de las páginas de pago | Clases de Periodismo

Juega Paywall! Lo difícil de las páginas de pago | Clases de Periodismo — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:38:56 +0000

[...] este ‘juego’ desarrollado por Nieman Lab se puede calcular los ingresos que se recibirá por el paywall. Como señala el blog del Nieman Lab, [...]

By: Play Paywall!, the new web game sweeping the newspaper industry | A Second Opinion

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:16:50 +0000

[...] Unfortunately, no one knows for sure whether it will. It’s all estimates, assumption, and guesswork — even if it’s relatively well informed, carefully researched guesswork. We just don’t know how readers and advertisers will react…more [...]

By: Sim city for newspaper web revenue | Lannie Byrd

Sim city for newspaper web revenue | Lannie Byrd — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:30:26 +0000

[...] paywall’s audience and revenue numbers, Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab has released a paywall simulation that let’s you play with revenue, audience and subscription numbers. It’s a lot of [...]

By: Greg Satell

Greg Satell — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:36:14 +0000

There’s one simple truth that all of the talk about paywalls ignores. Distribution is not a profit center for most newspapers in print, so there’s no reason to suspect that it will be online.

Online news publications can be very profitable (I should know, I’ve run one). Paywalls are not how it’s done.

The simple fact is that the New York Times doesn’t run their online business unit very well and that’s why they don’t make money. This move will probably lose them another year at least.

- Greg

By: Lost Remote | Notes: Paywall! the game, Touch screens getting smarter

Lost Remote | Notes: Paywall! the game, Touch screens getting smarter — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:11:04 +0000

[...] Web: Nieman comes up “Paywall!” It’s a calculator/game that lets you estimate what your revenues would look like if [...]

By: Albert Sun

Albert Sun — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 11:01:39 +0000

Economic Analysis of the New York Times Paywall…

After the New York Times announced its metered paywall last week there has been a lot of empty blather. Standing out from all the noise are two very good analyses. The first was by Felix Salmon for Reuters, analyzing a consumers decision of whether or …

By: Newsday Readers Don’t Pay, They Go Away « Screenwerk

Newsday Readers Don’t Pay, They Go Away « Screenwerk — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 08:55:47 +0000

[...] (See also: Play Paywall!, the new web game sweeping the newspaper industry.) [...]

By: Play Paywall!, the New Web Game Sweeping the Newspaper Industry | Jonathan Stray | Voices | AllThingsD

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 08:33:32 +0000

[...] Read the rest of this post on the original site Tagged: Internet, Voices, advertising, digital, economy, innovation, media, newspaper, Jonathan Stray, New York Times, Nieman Lab, paywall | permalink Sphere.Inline.search("", "http://voices.allthingsd.com/20100127/play-paywall-the-new-web-game-sweeping-the-newspaper-industry/"); « Previous Post ord=Math.random()*10000000000000000; document.write(''); [...]

By: Play Paywall!, The new web game sweeping the newspaper industry « Il Giornalaio

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 04:25:31 +0000

[...] Il simulatore è settato sui dati raccolti da Neiman Lab con specifico riferimento al quotidiano newyorkino ma è possibile variare i dati ed effettuare una elaborazione a proprio piacimento, variando i cpm per view [settati per default sui livelli alti del mercato], la percentuale di adesioni scomponendola in 5 sottogruppi di utenti e numerosi altri elementi che impatteranno sul risultato finale. [...]

By: Jonathan Stray

Jonathan Stray — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 01:42:52 +0000

Steve,

“But why do we need to “transform the economics of news publishing?” In 2007, just before the recession hit, newspapers generated $880 per paid subscriber per year. In 2006, the last full year before the recession, it was $926.”

Those numbers refer to print revenue, which has been disappearing rapidly and will probably never come back. E.g, NYT print subscribers are now below 1M for the first time in 25 years, and print ad sales are down 25% year-over-year for Q4 2009: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/ad-revenue-is-down-but-looking-a-bit-better-at-the-new-york-times/

Glenn, point taken on the improbability of top dollar ad sales. But I think an average per page CPM is still probably a reasonable way to model things. Interstitials don’t get served without pages.

262M page views (as Business Week reported and I’ve duplicated in the default model) at $31 CPM gives $8.1M per month, so again circa $100M a year. That figure was a 2008 estimate of course, but it’s worth nothing that the link above above also reports a 10% increase in online ad sales.

They may not be getting $31 CPM per page on their banner ad sales, but all in I think they have to be making something like this on average.

As usual, if you know of better data, I’d like to know to!

By: Steve Ross

Steve Ross — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:22:33 +0000

BTW, here’s a breaking story on the number of people who signed up for the Newsday pay-site: 35.

The price was high — $5 a week or $260/year, about the same as print.

http://www.observer.com/2010/media/after-three-months-only-35-subscriptions-newsdays-web-site

Oh, joy.