Learning the right lesson from Times Select
Steve Safran September 20th, 2007
There’s a temptation when an online experiment fails to engage in the “I Told You So” game, which generally doesn’t do anyone any good. The New York Times tried its luck with its Times Select subscription service. It didn’t work. I don’t penalize people for trying, especially online. But I do like to take what lessons I can from failure. One of the lessons from the Times Select experiment may not be so obvious.
The failure of Times Select along with the recent failure of CNN’s Pipeline should put to an end the notion that people will pay for online news. But I think most people understand that. There are so many choices out there that if one site wants me to pay, I’ll just go to another. If your columnists are behind a paid firewall — heck, I can live without them. It turns out the marketplace wasn’t screaming for subscription-based opinion.
Fine.
But here’s another conclusion: we think our brands are bigger than they really are.
This is a harder one to accept. But I have to tell you that nearly every news outlet believes they are the brand in their area for news. And they can’t all be. Or maybe they are — and it’s not news that people are looking for online. Does it matter if you’re the brand for news when I’m searching for reliable restaurant listings?
Times Select believed that people would pay for its writers because it is “The Times.” CNN believed people would subscribe to its video service because it’s “CNN.” This is no different from stations and newspapers believing that people will visit their sites because they are “the news channel” or they have “the brand” for trust. The fact is that the information rules.
There is a blog I like in my hometown, and I don’t for a minute care that the guy who runs it appears to be a little off his nut. In fact, it’s part of his charm. In fact, I’d go so far as to say he is “the brand” for “off his nut!” But along the way to being a few cents north of eccentric, he posts some pretty good stuff, including Photoshopped pictures that show what certain areas of town would look like if the town would only clear away some brush or take down old signs, entertaining critiques of town meetings (a phrase I never thought I’d write) and occasionally he writers some damn good opinion.
He’s a voice, and he’s far more relevant to my life than a Times opinion writer or CNN live stream of a Capitol Hill hearing. But he’s free and that’s the point. We choose our media diet based upon the information. Should I write off the local blogger because he’s not associated with a traditional media outlet? We see all the choices out there and make our decisions about what to trust and what to put in our RSS readers. And I have to tell you, nobody’s stabbing-of-the-day is in my Google Reader.
On the Web, you can’t assume your offline brand means anything. That’s especially true when there is so much information that is so similar to your own. (Admit it.) Learn the lesson from Times Select — the right lesson. No — not that people won’t pay you anything. The lesson is that you have to rethink your brand and what it means to meet the online audience on their terms.
9 Comments Add your own
1. j$ | September 20th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
good points. i’d like to hear your opinion about where a local site like gothamist fits in- basically an aggregator of all local sources.
in some ways in it is more in depth on any one story than all the local papers, as one post can contain quotes from more than one paper or even tv news site.
on the other hand it’s not as comprehensive and subject to the editor’s will as to what is more newsworthy than others.
a site like gothamist will quote from times select or wsj online along with a summary of what’s in the pay article. combine that with the competing coverage of an issue into one post and you don’t feel like you’re missing anything.
2. Dan | September 20th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Along those same lines, where does one go, right now,
if one wants to find the best Italian restaurants in Seattle? Do a google. You get individual newspaper and TV station sites and then have to drill down and down to find what you want. It’s a big pain with a
capital P.
The information is restaurant reviews, not a list of
restaurants who paid you to be on their site with
glorified copy about your food and service. You only
get real reviews on newspaper and other local outlets
and maybe Zaget. It’s generated at some sites I trust,
but the review is the info I want. A self contained piece of info that has value to me.
So why can’t someone put together a site that puts them all in one place?
Or why can’t newspapers and everyone else tag their
reviews so they are searchable? Remember, I’ll see
their ads when I call up the review. I’m not talking
just getting text here. Pictures of the interior and even
video of the chef or testimonials (interviews with
past customers…. news style) if they were available
which of course, no newspaper is doing. And a google
map and parking info.
Or is it out there and I, along with everyone I know
doesn’t know about it.
Of course this is only one example of what Steve
is saying. The information or the story is what I want.
I’ll take your ads on your page, but don’t make me
work really really hard to find what I want.
Dan
3. Steve Safran | September 20th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
@ j$: Local sites that aggregate information, blog their own content, invite comment and build communities are terrific. Local media outlets are starting to dip a toe into this, and they certainly should. Keep in mind, however, that aggregators don’t exist without the original source material.
@ Dan: It’s remarkable, isn’t it? Even sites that do have restaurant review sections bury them. They don’t make the sections their own sites, which would have much greater value - and be easier to remember and find.
4. Diana | September 20th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Unless you want to read 100% amateur content or never get paid for creating it, the question isn’t should the NYT be free but who’s going to pay for it it, advertisers or readers. The result of dropping Times Select is a lot more ads on the NYT site, including interstitials that five years ago no one could stomach.
Unlike most blogs, a lot of NY Times content is worth paying for–I subscribe happily to the print edition.
My local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle is having a much tougher time because its content is so much worse. As a reader, I’m much more interested original reporting than opinions, which you can find on a million blogs for free.
Unfortunately the content that attracts page views is more likely to be trashier, in part because that’s what people search for. Popularity is not an indicator of usefulness. Daily dish gets a lot more hits than Congressional testimony on Iraq.
Not too different from broadcast TV, except that viewers seem to be willing to pay for cable.
5. Anonymous | September 20th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
What’s your assessment of WSJ.com’s subscription model?
6. mike jones | September 20th, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Times Select is free because the ad market is hot. If WSJ goes free, it will be because of the same short-sided reason.
Diversification of revenue is a good thing. If (when?) this bubble pops again and we go into recession, the Times will regret this move.
Is 2001 forgotten already?
7. discreet_chaos | September 21st, 2007 at 12:53 am
Maybe it’s me being me, but it’d never occur to me to go to news site for restaurant listings. Perhaps I’d go to a newspaper site looking for a review, though I haven’t gone looking for a review on a news site since day one of the www, but in theory, I guess that I could.
There’s far too many other places to find resturaunt listings on the web and a news site would never cross my mind. And, if someone wanted to create a list or aggregate reviews, they really wouldn’t need a media company behind them. I’m sure that over a relatively short period of time, the same amount of traffic could be obtained through search engine marketing/optimization. and pointed toward a wickedly cheap domain.
8. Bob Babcock | September 21st, 2007 at 10:31 am
I bought the access to Times Select, having gotten it free for so long previously; it was a good service at a fair price (plus, it was an easy route to old articles).
That said, I agree with your points on branding. The NYTimes has been trying to morph from NYC’s paper of record to that of the globe, and has perhaps overreached here. Times Select was born from the editorial page’s luminaries’ consternation that they were relegated to occasional seats across from Stephanopolous, while cable news talking heads dominated opinion shaping (with an editorial slant opposite that of The New York Times).
And let’s face it, early in the game, the cost of bandwidth cut so far into ad revenue that you needed a paid subscription model (lifted from the first commercial internet success-porn), so why not take the top ten pages on your site and charge for them? Now that bandwidth and server technology is cheaper, your have more room to experiment- hence NBC’s announcement yesterday, and the FOX/ITUnes deal.
9. fleetwood mack | September 21st, 2007 at 12:29 pm
A question above about WSJ pay model.
It works because it is must have information for a niche (big niche, monied niche) that lives, profits or dies based on the information and access to it.
That’s why it has worked from inception.
There was nothing about Times Select beyond the Publisher’s desire, that made it gotta have; gotta have now.
And in all the brave talk at its death from NYT, they talked gross dollars I bet and one has to wonder what the net was after development costs and a huge marketing budget to keep the sinking ship floating a while longer.
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