What about the New York Times?

David Carr has a column in the New York Times in which he speculates about the future of the New York Times. He starts off with a disclaimer, telling us that he's not privy to the conversations at the upper, business levels of the company and then walks us through the gossip and speculation surrounding the Times.

His conclusion, of course, is that the Times will keep on chugging for a while longer. More interesting, I think, is the fact that he aims the tail end of his column at the idea of paywalls and other methods for charging for online content.

Ad prices are pitiful on the Web. Everybody knows that, except for one of my newspaperman friends who still thinks there's money aplenty to be had in them there hills. But that's beside the point. As Carr points out, the Web has made the amount of ad space virtually unlimited, meaning that the cost per inch (or per whatever measurement you want to apply) drops significantly. There is no equivalent to the old column-inch system, he says.

For more than 100 years, Tiffany has occupied the upper-right corner of Page 3 of The New York Times. Until our digital model finds a way to create a similar kind of exalted placement, it will be tough to charge the kind of prices for advertising that reflect the cost of producing quality content.

The natural answer is to throw up a paywall and start charging the freeloading bastards. Well, that may be a "natural" response, but Carr thinks it's also the wrong response.

Throwing up a big content wall would satisfy a visceral need on the part of journalists to have people pay for their work, but it would be a bet-the-company move at a very perilous time for media companies, including, yes, The New York Times. As it is, the company will use all levers — paper and digital, consumer and advertising, cost and investment — to maneuver very carefully through complicated waters.

Asking readers who have come of age on a "free news" Web to start paying for the same material that was, yesterday, free is equivalent to asking them to find another Web site to read. Period.

Related posts:

1. New York Times plans to start charging its Web readers
2. Mr. New York Times, Tear Down that (Pay) Wall!
3. Examples from the New York Times
4. New York Times audio guru talks with the Nieman Journalism Lab
5. New York Times video about Google camera car