{"id":658934,"date":"2013-05-20T09:07:12","date_gmt":"2013-05-20T13:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paidcontent.org\/?p=229660"},"modified":"2013-05-20T09:07:12","modified_gmt":"2013-05-20T13:07:12","slug":"new-york-times-ceo-calls-digital-pay-model-most-successful-decision-in-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/658934","title":{"rendered":"New York Times CEO calls digital pay model \u201cmost successful\u201d decision in years"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a commencement address to business students at Columbia University, New York Times CEO Mark Thompson hailed the company’s digital subscription strategy and dismissed skeptics who say media outlets can’t reinvent themselves.<\/p>\n

“[T]he launch of the pay model is the most important and \u00a0most successful business decision made by The New York\u00a0Times in many years. We have around 700,000 paid digital\u00a0subscribers across the company\u2019s products so far and a new\u00a0nine-figure revenue-stream which is still growing.”<\/p>\n

Thompson added that media pundits predicted that the Times’<\/em>\u00a0subscription model, which is based on a so-called “metered paywall<\/a>,” would be a disaster when it launched in 2011. Since then, he noted, it’s become a standard for the rest of the newspaper industry.<\/p>\n

“In modern media, you could\u00a0make the case that the best way forward is to listen carefully to what the industry has to say and then do the exact\u00a0opposite.”<\/p>\n

Thompson also equated disruptions in the news business to what’s happening in other industries, like high tech and car rental, and said that risk-taking is the secret of America’s culture of innovation and entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n

Commencement speeches are, by nature, restricted to this sort of soaring stuff. A skeptic, however, might note that\u00a0the New York Times<\/em>‘ digital subscription model has already begun to plateau<\/a> and that the company is still shedding ad dollars and assets. Likewise, Thompson, who arrived from the BBC only months ago, still has to prove he can run an institution that isn’t supported by mandatory contributions from the public.<\/p>\n

But the tone of Thompson’s speech is the right one, and it’s welcome to see the New York Times<\/em> waving its banner not just in the safe halls of Columbia’s journalism school but amongst the MBA crowd as well. If you want to read more of what he said, here’s a longer excerpt:<\/p>\n

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The American news business is living through revolutionary times. For The New York Times, which I joined six months ago, it means catapulting the Grey Lady into a world very different from the one in which she spent her first century and a half: multimedia, multi-platform, multi pretty much \u00a0everything.<\/p>\n

There are some things we\u2019re not going to take risks with. The quality, authority and accuracy of our journalism. Our values, including the time-honoured but still vital tradition of keeping our journalism independent from the commercial interests of the company. In the age of so-called \u2018native\u2019 advertising in which the boundary between editorial and commercial content is more and more frequently blurred, that tradition of maintaining a clear line between the journalism and the business of The New York Times is more\u00a0important than ever.<\/p>\n

But we will not secure the future of The Times without the kind of bold innovation \u2013 in products and services, in
business-model \u2013 which is intrinsically and necessarily risky.\u00a0Two years ago The Times launched a new digital pay model, essentially asking users of The Times on digital to do what more than a million print users of the newspaper were already doing, which is to pay a regular subscription in return
for extensive access to our journalism.<\/p>\n

The consensus among the experts was that it wouldn\u2019t work, was foolhardy in fact and not needed. People just weren\u2019t prepared to pay for high quality content on the internet and, besides, wasn\u2019t digital advertising enough \u2013 wouldn\u2019t it grow until, just as with print advertising in the golden age of physical newspapers, it alone was enough to support America\u2019s newsrooms?<\/p>\n

In fact the launch of the pay model is the most important and most successful business decision made by The New York Times in many years. We have around 700,000 paid digital\u00a0subscribers across the company\u2019s products so far and a new\u00a0nine-figure revenue-stream which is still growing. Much of\u00a0the rest of the US newspaper industry is now following suit.\u00a0And developing this pay model, launching a suite of new\u00a0subscription products to attract additional new subscribers, is\u00a0central to our plans for the future<\/p>\n

What\u2019s interesting, though, was that initial widespread skepticism. It won\u2019t work. It\u2019s mad. They\u2019re barking up the
wrong tree.<\/p>\n

In many ways, the thing that gets disrupted in a disruptive age is the conventional wisdom. Wherever you end up, in this country or abroad, starting your own business or joining an established company large or small, you\u2019ll bump into conventional wisdom and all the apparently excellent advice that flows from it. But the definition of a disruptive age is one in which the discontinuities outnumber and overwhelm the continuities and in which predictions based on the past or the smooth projection of current trends into the future frequently prove unsound. Conventional wisdom tries valiantly to keep up, to recalibrate in the light of recent\u00a0developments, but because it cannot foresee\u00a0transformational breakthroughs or the kind of behavioral and\u00a0business-model pivots which digital technology makes\u00a0possible, it never can.<\/p>\n

Take my industry. The movies are finished. TV advertising is dead. Exactly what happened to music will happen to TV. Nobody wants news anymore. No one will ever pay for anything on the internet. Not just said, but said widely and widely believed. And \u2013 for the most part and within the time horizon which the prophets themselves were suggesting \u2013\u00a0just plain wrong.<\/p>\n

All of the strategically successful things I\u2019ve been involved in \u2013 whether a set of new TV channels or developing the BBC\u2019s digital on-demand service, the i-Player \u2013 have had this thing in common: that, at the point of launch, pretty much everyone not involved in the project has agreed that it was\u00a0going to be a total disaster. In modern media, you could make the case that the best way forward is to listen carefully to what the industry has to say and then do the exact\u00a0opposite.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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