Clock it is Friend of Time

Many months ago, I and others listened to the publisher, Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., industry through the different approaches for getting digital consumers to participate in paying for content and I suggested afterward to Bill Keller, foreman editor of the newspaper: “He just doesn’t want to bet the business on a model.”

And Mr. Keller, less prone to impulse than I, said: “How is that a bad reaction?”

People who remain reflexively bullish on free ignore the fact that the clock is ticking on many of the legacy businesses that beget that content. The new approach is an effort to replace that ticking clock with a meter, and its success is not assured but to sit still would be dumb. It is not the job of The New York Times or any other mainstream media firm to give away its content until it can no longer afford to do so. By requiring certain kinds of digital consumers to participate, The Times is ensuring it will be in job for a long time to come. It could be a smaller business, one with less reach, but it will remain an engine of news and commerce. The determination announced Wednesday morning represents a hedge, an operating model that puts maximum flexibility in the hands of the direction of the newspaper. As the digital czar Martin Nisenholtz said over and over in a meeting about the decision on Tuesday, “the idea is to enhance revenue” with an eye toward the cyclical state of the advertising business. With Times Select, The New York Times irremediable eyeballs at precisely the time when sheer tonnage of readers became the defining metric in advertising. By building a metered system, the executives have installed a dial on the gargantuan, heaving content machine of The New York Times. Access can be gradually ramped up or down depending on macro trends in the Stock Exchange. Given the dynamic state of the advertising business and how quickly things change on the Web, not so dumb when you think about it. (The make advances also has the ancillary benefit of allowing the company to set price and access levels a year from now, when a recovery in advertising will be more explicit and any plan will be used to address more chronic, secular issues.)