But it’s a move doomed to failure. Here’s why. Information. Lots of it. Gobs of it. Today’s media landscape isn’t measured in column inches, but rather in conversations. The content of the New York Times might be the start of many of those conversations, but they rarely (if ever) manage to keep them going at the New York Times. Instead, the stories and links get passed around, take place elsewhere, spread around the net in viral tides.

And that bothers the New York Times. Not like this is a new development. Newspapers, like books, have always been shared between readers. “Hey are you done with the sport section? Yeah, trade you for the business section.” The problem is that kind of sharing is limited by scarcity. Not so online. Neither is the competition. People who do things better steal eyeballs who otherwise would have read a section of a newspaper.

Need a new futon? Craigslist that shit.
Ditto for a job.
What’s the score of the game? There’s only a million or so sites that can tell you that right now, plus give you tons of information beyond the score because all they do is sports.
Ditto for cooking, entertainment, politics, culture, and even neighborhood news.

So, instead of competing with these specialized venues (probably a bad idea) or turning the New York Times website into a destination for conversations (probably a good idea, destinations mean pages views, pages views mean ad revenue, ad revenue means continued employment), the Times went for option C – what I like to call “Hide behind a wall.”

And here’s how Option C is going to work out. At first, a lot of loyal subscribers will sign up. The initial numbers might even look promising. People are paying and coming into the castle. “We’re saved!”

You aren’t.

Your good stories, the real winners, will leak out. Everyone will read them, however they’ll completely ignore the rest of the New York Times. Your overall page impressions will fall. So will your ad revenue. Suddenly, your only source of income will be your subscribers.

And that leads us to part two. Subscribers will stop growing. Quickly. Bringing new subscribers in after that first generation will be harder. Keeping subscribers will be harder. After you erect a pay wall, there’ll be an initial vacuum in the news market. Your brand is now focusing inward, and all your former readers who wouldn’t pony up the cash few an online subscription? They’ll move on. Someone else will get them.

Eventually, your brand loyalty will wane. Current subscribers will start to leave. Getting new customers will become nigh impossible. You’ll be forced with two options – raise prices or innovate. Raising prices will drive more customers away and make getting new ones even more difficult. Innovating, well, we’ve already seen the Old Gray Lady thinks of that.

And if you still think this whole pay wall thing is a good idea? Why don’t you talk to the folks who were in charge way back in 2007, when you ended your other pay wall – TimesSelect.

Looking for Word Counts and Page lengths? Check here the new Writing Resource Section.

As silly as this might sound, I have grown quite accustomed to framing my thoughts into two very different lengths – 140 characters and 1200 words. The first, of course, is for Twitter. The second, however, comes from the few years that I wrote for a local entertainment rag. The article which I was to hand in was usually the same article I wrote the month prior, but with the details swapped out. These articles were always 1200 to 1300 words.

It’s a hard train of thought to get out of, that 1200 word rut. Two pages of single-spaced, 10-point font. 1200 words is enough time to devise a witty introduction, delve into a bit of history, make three solid points, and then wrap up in an earnest fashion. Despite how formulaic this seems, it’s a formula for a reason – it works.

However, 1200 words on the internet is, well, an eternity. Correction, it’s an eternity when the hook doesn’t warrant it. It’s funny, I got started writing ahem “professional” non-fiction online before making the jump to print. Now that I’m coming back, I’m having issues dealing with a lack of a newshole. So, as I’m wrapping things up here on the construction side, expect to see a higher volume of material, just not in the oh-so-familiar 1200 word length.

Oh, and for the record, 140 characters is the perfect length for being an asshole.