Business
There's a huge hole in the NYTimes' paywall
The New York Times paywall is coming in early 2011, but there is a glaring hole in its design...
Jay Rosen teaches journalism at NYU. He noticed that the New York Times will allow readers following links on a blog site to read articles for free.
In answering questions about the paywall, the management of the New York Times wrote:
If you are coming to NYTimes.com from another Web site and it brings you to our site to view an article, you will have access to that article and it will not count toward your allotment of free ones.Excellent news. I cannot wait for the paywall because I will build a blog site that is a shadow of the NYTimes.com, and all my readers will get free access! I have a solution and I call it 'adtribution.' Bloggers that quote or link to NYT stories agree to carry one or more text-ad links from the newspaper. Studies have shown that less than half of people click through to the source article. This way, the New York Times gets distribution for its stories and its advertisers. And by agreeing to adtribution, the bloggers get a license to quote and link to New York Times stories.
BTW: Here's another problem - Newspaper Paywalls Could Be Used To Spread Misinformation...