Time's James Poniewozik has suggested that the significance of the New York Times's paywall is symbolic, rather than a sign that paid online content is the future for news. "Any pricing scheme that can raise actual money risks chasing away actual readers," and this why the NYT's charging method "probably won't make much difference to the Times's coffers or its readers at first."

As Poniewozik says, there are many people who won't end up paying for an online subscription to the New York Times. Print subscribers will get free access, casual readers won't have to pay, and those directed via other websites won't pay.

Therefore, "the real significance of the plan is symbolic," it is an admittance of "vulnerability" that shows a "crack in the firmament" of the media.

Poniewozik's argument that the charging method won't have much of an effect on the paper income is backed by Reuters writer Felix Salmon, who has already written pertinent commentary on the NYT's planned paywall. He has heard that NYT executives expect the payment plan to be "revenue neutral," meaning that the amount of money brought in from subscriptions is expected to equal the amount of money lost in advertising revenue. So why are they bothering to do it?

- Diversification of revenue streams is one motivation, said Salmon. "If the online ad market gets worse rather than better, the subscription base will help to cushion the blow," he writes.
- One of the advantages of a metered paywall is flexibility: the number of free articles available could be increased if advertising revenue falls too much and people aren't subscribing.
- There is always a chance that the paywall will be an enormous success.

Therefore, the paywall seems to be a risk worth taking, or as Salmon put it, "a bit like a free lottery ticket for the NYT." It might succeed, and if it doesn't, the paper hopefully won't lose too much money (though obviously there is a slight chance that it might.)

"What's sad," said Salmon, "is that the NYT has given up its dream of winning the other lottery: becoming such a popular and high-value global news source that it will be able to make a very large amount of money from a free website," and that "the NYT is happy to risk losing its paper-of-record status online for the sake of making this bet."

The Guardian is one paper that has not given up on this "other lottery:" editor Alan Rusbridger recently described the paper's intention to keep its extremely popular (almost 37 million uniques in December) website free of charge, in an effort to keep the Guardian in a position to take advantage of the "the web's power." He believes that the open web culture of linking and interacting has meant that journalists "have never before been able to tell stories so effectively."

Only time will tell which approach will be more effective, and if the NYT's paywall has more than symbolic significance.

Source: Time, Reuters (via Poynter)