Los Angeles Times to Charge You For Online Content: Bad News, if You Ask Us

By Dennis Romero Fri., Feb. 24 2012 at 12:07 PM

I said maybe / You're gonna be the one that saves me / And after all / You're my ... paywall.

Yes, your beloved Los Angeles Times is jumping into the paywall game -- charging readers for online access to its content beginning March 5.

You'll be able to read 15 stories on a device, but, after that, it's pay-time:

Readers will be offered an "introductory" rate for online membership of .99 cents a week. But the final price will be $3.99 a week. Print subscribers will get online content free.

Predictable? Unimaginative? You betcha. This smells of something cooked up by non-journalist suits who embody the term don't get it. Paywall. Wow. Never heard of that one before. They should package it with a weekly lifestyle section targeting the youth demographic, because everyone knows kids like to get their news via paper.

(Wait, the Times also says it's launching yet another weekly lifestyle section. Really.)

The Times has blockbuster page views that will surely diminish as it pulls you over on the information super highway to ask for your credit card number.

Demanding that folks pay for well-produced content isn't morally wrong, even though the price of delivering said content -- the old-school basis for subscriptions -- is practically nothing.

It's just bad business sense in this environment: It seems to work only for very specialized publications with have-to-have-it audiences (the Wall Street Journal is example No. 1).

Where it hasn't worked is at mass-market, general-readership publications. People like to call the New York Times' paywall a success, but it isn't. It's an annoyance. It's not a failure -- but it hasn't begun to soak up the red ink caused by declining print readership. Not even close. Has it turned the company around? Has it caused the New York Times to turn down the investment cash (and loans) of a Mexican billionaire? Not really. Not sure how you call that a success.

We'd expect the same here in L.A. In order to be a successful part of the web's fast-and-furious flow of information, you have to keep it free and easy, like Lindsay Lohan.

In any case, what you don't want is a reason for people to leave your site and read, say, L.A. Weekly, which delivers daily news to your digital device at the low, low rate of free.

To which you might respond, sure, but the Times kicks your ass on a daily basis.

True. Very true. But how will you know? You're going to fork over that $3.99 to find out?

Tell you what: We won't even know. They'll have to tell us via Twitter.

For more on changes to the lifestyle sections at the Times -- and the elimination of its standalone Food section -- check out our sister blog, Squid Ink.

[@dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]

Tags:

content, journalism, LA Weekly, Los Angeles Times, media, paid content, paywall

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rgomez1

Good bye LA times. Your content sucks and is not worth the money. Beside there are plenty of other news sites and the reading is much much better! Never again will i buy or read from the la times. How dare they charge when people are still looking for work and the economy is in the dump.

The NY Times is a much better read but still have not decided to subscribe as of yet.

BillBlackfield

A new service called MyCube lets you receive money for content that you have posted. It is a very interesting system of digital content and seemed very promising to me

Michael Woglom

As of today when the paywall hit me...I bid Adieu....

LYNDA

I monitored my time actually online reading the LA Times and most of it was spent scrolling down to see if there was anything I really wanted to read. I do read online newspspers rather than print...but for local (CA and southland) I tend to look to the News for general stories, on one of the smaller sources (KPCC, tv stations, etc) and SF Gate which I know isn't a great paper, but I grew up reading it and I often find solid California news that hadn't made it to the LAT yet (or might never). Of course for real news, world news, I'm a Guardian (the UK version) reader and have been since 2000....Another UK site I like is the Independent. They've set up a pay wall, but it's more affordable:4.99 GBP per month....and I am considering becoming a subscriber. If SF Gate raises a wall, depending on the price, I'd pay that.I guess what I find so loathsome is that the LAT could be in so much better shape financially and have more supporters if they hadn't done such a great job of ruining the paper.When I am scrolling down the page I can't tell what is news/info and what is product placement or actual ads (I'm thinking of all the travel/food/drink, etc with the pretty pictures).They barely cover soccer and horseracing so I get that news elsewhere. Their Book sections is atrophied into a vague memory of what it was (yes, I do like the Book thing they do every year but that's as much to benefit them with the backers and advertising revenue as to really care for their readers.I don't like the Facebook thing, so I don't comment and can't be bothered to read the comments from those who do as there are seldom informed opinions to be found there.

Someone else commented on losing Jonathan Gold and how it will so adversely affect the LA Weekly. I bought the book a long time ago and I used to read Gold's column every week...and then I sort of lost interest. It doesn't mean I don't respect his knowledge and experience butat some point I was enjoying reading blogs and other sources of reviews because they didn't seem so 'know it all'--even if he does know almost 'al'. I don't recognize the name of the other person who's leaving the Weekly so I must not have read that person enough to matter (to me).

I worked for a company that was faced with a change in their revenue base and one of the family members who had re-engineered one of the family holdings (an orange juice company) was given the responsibility. Guess what: He re-engineered it into bankruptcy.

Good night Lou Grant, you did great work, it was nice knowing you.

jasporia

Nobody says yay I can pay for this now. But if they aren't making enough money off advertising what do you propose?Print la times money to pay the bills?Its real easy to criticize but I don't see a better option

The Complainer

We are willing to go out on a limb when we predict that overall traffic will fall significantly when The LA Times—and Gannett—introduce their paywalls.

Instead of charging readers (for what many believe is less-than-exceptional content), they should have looked at ways to improve advertising revenue by increasing traffic and engaging more out-of-region readers in their online communities.

The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal might be able to get away with digital subscriptions because they have become a truly global newspapers/news-sources of record, with strong, proprietary content driving traffic for global readerships. Few of Gannett’s papers (or, the LA Times) can come close to matching anything close to that level of content—or community. Expect to see growth for the NY Times and the WSJ.

We’ll be shorting Gannett. We'll sort of/kind of miss the LAT.

The Complainerhttp://www.thecomplainer.org

HBarca

Yes, the Times has "blockbuster page views" because it has a huge staff generating stories and photos. Here's the news flash: Those page views could pay for about 15 percent of the staff. And it's not getting better. The paywall is a boneheaded move - except not having a paywall is suicide.

Frawsty

Aaaaaannnnnnnnnndddddd the race is on!! Who will go out of business first, the LA Times or LA Weekly. This week both moved ahead equally, the LA Times overcharging its customers for mediocre content, and LA Weekly losing two of its writers, Jonathan Gold and Elina Shatkin.