The Wall Street Journal's decision to stay a paid site has been the focus of a lot of blogger ire in the last week.  Scott Karp just posted an article on it entitled "WSJ.com Remains A Paid Site And Bets On The Value Of Its Niche Audience".  The article is a good read and basically lays out how the Wall Street Journal has a niche market that is extremely valuable to advertisers which is why the subscription model makes sense.   But what makes Mr Karp's post amazing (and a little disturbing) is that he lays out tons of evidence as to why WSJ.com made the right decision and then does a 180 at the end of the post saying this...

It seems unlikely that WSJ can retain its high-value audience profile long-term against the lure of the larger web — that is so long as WSJ only offers its own original content.

Imagine the power the WSJ brand would have to point people to the best financial content across the web — just as the New York Times admitted it couldn’t be the last word in technology coverage when it started aggregating technology headlines from across the web.

Would a new generation of executives and active investors pay the WSJ to be the best source of not only original reporting but ALL reporting in their niche?

This seems like an example of someone so set in a certain way of thinking that they are missing the forest for the trees. 

Here's the thing, in the Web as in real life there is going to be more than one business model that works.  So there is no reason why subscription based content can't coexist with free content.  What determines whether a subscription model will work is the quality of the content being offered by subscription.

This brings me to the NY Times example which bloggers are so fond of these days.  Yes, the New York times stopped being a subscription based site and Yes I believe that was the right decision.  But the reason for that is because, to be blunt, the NY Times quality of writing has fallen drastically in recent years.  It really has come to the point where some of the quality political bloggers out there are as good if not better than the columnists employed by the NY Times.

So the NY Times no longer had any unique value to offer the consumer which is why their subscription model was failing miserably.  The Wall Street Journal still manages to employ industry leading columnists and editors who report exclusively for WSJ.com.  As long as they can continue to keep access to those people behind the pay wall I don't think they'll have any trouble competing against the web as a whole. 

There are many smart people out there with blogs just as in the pre-blog world there were many smart people at newspapers other than the Wall Street Journal.  But the paper WSJ continued to sell because they focused on having the best people write for them and I don't see why WSJ.com can't thrive by doing the same. 

Very rarely is a topic so in tune with what is actually happening in my real life but as I stare out at the blinking lights of the Las Vegas strip, each light trying desperately to draw my attention from all its competitors,  I can't help but think about this whole Gawker Media/Pay Per Post thing.

First let me say that I think people are looking at this issue all wrong.  There is no global blogging mantra that is going to be right for both Gawker bloggers and every other blogger out there.

Having said that I don't think paying bloggers by the traffic they get is going to increase quality for anyone.  In fact I suspect it will actually hurt the quality of posts influenced by it.  But in this case I don't think it matters because...and I honestly intend no insult here but...its Gawker Media. 

The reality is that there are different kinds of media companies and each of those media companies have different goals.  A newspaper like the Wall Street Journal isn't going to say whatever it takes to get your attention because people buy the WSJ based largely on the integrity of the publication.  The WSJ isn't selling news as much as its selling reputation so how it says things is just as important as what it says.

The New York Post on the other hand is a company that is designed around putting something on the cover that will push out as many copies as possible.  The stories themselves obviously aren't as well thought out or as well written as what is in the WSJ but that isn't what their readers want.

That's the key here, not that one is better than the other but that they both have different reputations that are designed to sell different products.  The people reading the New York Post wouldn't care if the articles were as well written as those in the WSJ which makes trying for that level of quality a waste of time and resources.

Gawker has always been, for lack of a better term, an "in your face blog network".   They're the network that brought us Valleywag after all.  Gawker isn't a network built around prose and poignancy its a network built around getting attention.  Even the more serious entries such as Lifehacker still focus on end results more than the actual posts.  No one cares how well a Lifehacker post is written they care what it will teach them to do. 

So for Gawker I think this is exactly the right thing to do because in their business it isn't so much how well something is written as it is getting the interesting information out there.  Paying people for traffic might cause the quality of some articles to fall slightly but, to be blunt, its superfluous quality to begin with because the readers of sites like Fleshbot aren't visiting for the prose.

Anyway this post was just a way to kill time while my date got ready to go out so I'm now off to enjoy some of those twinkling lights out there.  One last night on the town and then its back to (ugh) real life. 

Happy (almost over) New Year to all!