Qualitative Facts:

New York Times offered Pay wall a subscription system in which the New York Times
website became restricted for users who exceed their allocated limit per month.
It was launched in Canada as test marketing before the national roll out.
Traditional newspapers have struggled to make their presence felt in digital and online
landscape.
This idea of Pay Wall faced criticism due to considering it an obsolete strategy and its
lack of sustainability in the future.
Initial results by December 2011 show encouraging signs with digital subscribers
increasing.
Long term prospects were uncertain. The growth was slowing down and there is question
of sustainability.
New York Times a leading global multimedia news and information company is facing
issue of declining subscription and revenues over the years.
Its advertising revenue were declining and despite cost cutting measures its profits have
declined considerably.
Newspaper industry is facing challenging time, as overall newspaper circulation in the
industry has declined.
Traditional sources of newspaper revenues such as subscription, retail and classified
advertising also declined.
Advent of internet provides opportunity and challenges to industry.
Industry lagged in response, other digital websites were able to attract advertisement on
their websites at the expense of newspapers websites.
As a response Newspapers put their content online and it became the number two source
for news after TV.

Online advertising revenues rates were significantly lower than prints advertising rates
and were a small portion of total newspaper revenues.
iPad provides another opportunity as it was expected to increase the usage of digital
newspaper due to the ease with which consumers can use it.
Peoples were of the view that IPad will hasten newspapers decline.
In 1996 The Times started charging overseas users but after 2 years it was abandoned .
Second attempt by The Times was TimeSelect to charge its reader was in 2005, It was
done on specific access to noted columnists.
The Paywall was also providing discounts to College students and some selected readers.
In just 2 years of existence TimeSelect grew to 227,000 paid subscribers.
Due to criticisms of the paywall approach, the program ended in 2007.
There were 4 broad options for designing the new paywall.
The management choose device specific and metered system that allowed users to read
20 articles a month without paying.
New paywall accommodated users which comes from social networking sides and search
engines.
Google were restricted to five articles per day limit which was above 20 free monthly
allocated limit.
Facebook and twitter was free from any limit.
All print subscribers were granted full access to all content across all media without any
additional charges.
The Times also partnered with the auto manufacturer Lincoln to provide free
subscriptions to heavy users of the website.
In 2012 The company reported 390,000 paid subscribers for its new digital initiative.
There was threat of decrease in website traffic and online advertising which will damage
overall revenue.
According to some experts in the industry, they considered The Times paywall a success.