Time‘s New Online Paywall Limits Readers’ Options

by Meenal Vamburkar | 1:17 pm, July 8th, 2010

» 7 comments

As journalism’s existentialist crisis continues, Time magazine has resorted to what many readers dread: an online paywall. Take a look around Time‘s website and you’ll find that print magazine content is no longer freely available. So how can you read it? Buy the print magazine…or the iPad edition.

While paywalls are becoming increasingly common (the New York Times announced paid content beginning next year, and the London Times just launched theirs), Time‘s strategy is a bit different because it doesn’t offer the option to buy access to the content through your web browser:

“To read this article in its entirety, pick up a copy of TIME magazine at your local newsstand or download the TIME iPad app.”

So essentially, if you don’t want to buy the physical publication and don’t have an iPad, you cannot read the entire story. Neiman Journalism Lab’s Joshua Benton calls it “a paywall without a door” and questions whether the novel approach will work–or if it’s just temporary:

The push is all toward print and the magazine’s iPad app. Is that a temporary shortfall, while Time figures out the best way to charge for web access? Or is it a sign publishers are concluding that the web is so problematic a platform for news-as-paid-content that they’re better off using it as a simple promotional platform for iPad apps and paper? Or to ask the zen question, is it really a paywall if there’s no way to pay?

Newsweek‘s Mark Coatney says the plan is basically destined to fail:

“[People] will pay for unique content…What they won’t pay for is any random story, simply because Time says they should. In any given issue of Time (or Newsweek, for that matter) it’s rare that there’s any story that a reader can’t find somewhere else, for free.”

It’s obviously too early to say whether this approach works for the publication–but time will tell whether readers feel too limited by the change.

Paywall, Time magazine, Time magazine paywall, Time.com

DrFunke

The idea that these sites will succeed with paywalls is hilarious and shows how utterly clueless they are with their future

Maybe the NYT could succeed if their price is low enough AND they increase their product with some new ideas. Wall Street succeeds with it so it isn’t impossible

But Time? Seriously? Their product will get them laughed out of the door
http://SailRabbits.com Magister

Didn’t Time serve only truncated snippets to non-subscribers up until just a couple of years ago? I believe the previous incarnation may have given access to subscribers, so that may be different, but a LOT of niche magazines still publish only their ToC and maybe one or two print articles online.

I don’t know offhand if this is the case with other Time Inc. properties, but there’s quite a bit of precedent and because Time Inc. has been trying different models since Pathfinder, they likely have data on the subject.

Oh, and though I don’t know their reasoning, but my theory would be that not making an electronic version available, they’re eliminating most of the risk that a blogger will do a cut ‘n paste.
http://SailRabbits.com Magister

ETA: One of the larger examples of a publication that makes very little of their print content available beyond their ToC that immediately sprang to mind was This Old House, which I see is a Time product, so they definitely have from stats from it.

And, though I don’t know that I’ve ever bought a copy and they do have a lot of content available, I’m under the impression that Maxim also withholds all or most of their print content.

I could list a bunch of others, but it’s not like Time will be alone.
felixw

Why pay to read fawning, obsequious articles about President Obama, when the rest of the media puts them up on the web for free.
http://www.libertarianism.com/ Burnnotice

Pay for stories I can Google for free? And with out the bias? LOL. Time, its time for you to go now, bye bye………..
Integr8d

I smell a bail-out…
Helix

If I wouldn’t read their suck-up stories for free, why would I even consider paying for them? See, the idea of a paywall is to have content in your magazine that people are actually willing to buy. Time doesn’t.