I just had the historic experience of getting dinged at the New York Times website for having gone over my 20 article limit for the month and needing to pay up. At first I thought, This is what I get after giving them a pass on the Dowd thing? Anyway, even though I didn’t have anything else I wanted to read at that moment I clicked through to another article to see what would happen.
Sure enough, there it was for about 2 seconds until a sign popped up telling me to subscribe. It gave me a quick explanation and then there’s this big button with the text “See My Options >”
I have to say it made me laugh. Because, like, isn’t that the conversation you have with your doctor? My options? Is it that bad?
Late Update: I should add on a more serious note that, unlike a lot of others, I don’t see anything wrong or wrongheaded about what the Times is doing. And of all the ways to implement a paywall this strikes me as one of the better thought out approaches I’ve seen. The old one — taking your opinion columnists out of circulation — bordered on insane. The paid vs ad supported question is a strategic one. Different approaches make sense for different kinds of publications. But there’s hardly anything wrong with placing a value on your product.
