Metered web reading is our savior?

The New York Times has a fascinating proposal to make some money off Web content: metered reading. You’d get so much for free, then to continue, you’d have to pony up.

It strikes me as a quintessentially New York solution, in that it reminds me of a taxi’s meter. And it might work for them. Executive Editor Bill Keller told staff that there needs to be a balance between too small a free period, which would drive people away, and too long, which wouldn’t get much revenue.

The Times is in a strong position, as they already make a lot of money from online ads. But not all local sites are. It could be that their sales staff isn’t good at selling online ads, or their advertisers don’t understand the value, but they aren’t able to claim much revenue from the Web.

So you can see why executives at local papers might be tempted to follow suit. But before we rush, lemming-like, to implement this (actually!) new idea, let’s have a think about it.

The Times is in a really great position in terms of content. They have fresh, constantly updated stories from all over the world, covering any topic you can imagine. You could spend hours roaming around the site, and, indeed, some people do. They also have hundreds of journalists filing stories. Do you?

Say you’re a mid-sized local paper with about a dozen reporters filing stories every day. You’ve convinced them to file early and often for the Web, and they’re doing that. On a good day, you add a few dozen stories during the day, covering breaking news, crime, traffic and local government. That appeals well to your base of readers, but your base is much smaller than that of the Times. And how long would it take to read all those stories?

Revenue models aren’t one-size-fit-all, as we should already know. This metering plan MIGHT work for very large, national papers with rich archives, lots of fresh content and many different topics to choose from. But for smaller papers, ones that have to compete with television stations or other media sources, it might end up driving people into the arms of their competitors.

There are other models out there, which might fit better. (And I hope to talk more about some soon).