Comment paywall devalues free traffic (Score 2, Interesting) 193
A little while ago I was reading on wikipedia about new york city's financial problems circa 1975. The wikipedia article claimed "there was a compromise between the city and the public unions", a link to an old new york times article was provided as a citation. I followed the link and encountered some kind of registration/log-in page, I suppose if I were to register, next I would encounter some sort of paywall. I simply did a google search for "new york city 1975 union compromise" and the first result was time magazine online, which provided me the full text of an article on that subject, dating back to that era. Contained on the page I viewed were links to more content from the same media conglomerate, perhaps customized to be more topical and relevant with the aid of an analytics company like google.
If new york times cannot generate a profit on free traffic, they need to look into partnering with someone who can. Putting a paywall in front of non-exclusive content devalues that content.