The NYT op-ed shakedown

I don’t have a great deal to offer on the New York Times‘ decision to charge for some its content (including the op-ed page) starting in September that Virginia Postrel and Matthew Yglesias haven’t already made. I do, however, have a research question that I bet some communications grad student has written a paper about ...

By , a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

I don't have a great deal to offer on the New York Times' decision to charge for some its content (including the op-ed page) starting in September that Virginia Postrel and Matthew Yglesias haven't already made. I do, however, have a research question that I bet some communications grad student has written a paper about -- to what extent does having a fee-for-content regime inhibit a web site's popularity/traffic/links? For example, most people I know consider the reportage of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times are papers of comparable quality (or maybe the Journal has a slight lead). However, the Times has an Alexa traffic rank of 107, while the Journal has a traffic rank of 540. Even USA Today, an inferior newspaper to the Journal, has a higher Alexa traffic rank. So it looks like free news sites attract a higher traffic level even if the quality of information is not as good. I'm sure someone out there has done a more systematic study of this question. Please post a link to useful research if you can find it. UPDATE: Hmm.... Mickey Kaus suggests that maybe I've been too hasty in judging the New York Times proposal.

I don’t have a great deal to offer on the New York Times‘ decision to charge for some its content (including the op-ed page) starting in September that Virginia Postrel and Matthew Yglesias haven’t already made. I do, however, have a research question that I bet some communications grad student has written a paper about — to what extent does having a fee-for-content regime inhibit a web site’s popularity/traffic/links? For example, most people I know consider the reportage of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times are papers of comparable quality (or maybe the Journal has a slight lead). However, the Times has an Alexa traffic rank of 107, while the Journal has a traffic rank of 540. Even USA Today, an inferior newspaper to the Journal, has a higher Alexa traffic rank. So it looks like free news sites attract a higher traffic level even if the quality of information is not as good. I’m sure someone out there has done a more systematic study of this question. Please post a link to useful research if you can find it. UPDATE: Hmm…. Mickey Kaus suggests that maybe I’ve been too hasty in judging the New York Times proposal.

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner

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