That’s true. But even if few convert to subscriptions, those $1.99 app sales are worth something. And that’s not counting the readers who bought the physical paper when they were unable to read it online for free. 

As I said, I don’t know if this will work for the Post. But can it really be “one of the most poorly conceived paywall efforts” you’ve ever seen if it’s driving so many app sales? 

Could it be that there’s money to be made by . . .selling things?

If you can find a judge who would not throw out such a suit at the first opportunity, I guess you deserve all the money you can extort.

Come on: How much good do those social referrals really do? Among the Post’s likely potential readers in New York, who isn’t familiar with it? Among those who haven’t heard of it, how many are likely potential readers? 

>>>One of the ideas behind ad-supported content is that enough readers, viewers or listeners “pay” with attention to make it worthwhile.

This is obvious – but it’s equally obvious that the currency of attention has been devalued in an online world. Simply put, the supply of advertising is no longer limited, while the demand for it still is. (As a percentage of the GDP, U.S. ad spending hasn’t changed much since the fifties.) That’s why most online ads are worth less than a tenth of what they would be in print – and why papers like the Guardian, which drink the free-content Kool Aid, are bleeding money. 

Although I have doubts about whether the Post’s strategy will work, it’s time to try something else.

On the most pragmatic basis, by insisting on an app or nothing, the paper is cutting itself off and breaking the social referrals that it hoped to use to encourage more readership. This would have been a good place to try a metered approach, perhaps. 

As for me, I personally don’t believe any content is “free” — someone always pays for it: sponsors/advertisers, subscribers, subsidy by the creator in the case of most user-gen either for enjoyment or, in  some cases, marketing, and so on. One of the ideas behind ad-supported content is that enough readers, viewers or listeners “pay” with attention to make it worthwhile. 

The outrage is foolish. Some publications pursue a strategy of free content – perhaps Staci would care to comment on how that’s working out for PaidContent.com? Others want to sell content – which _by definition_ requires restricting access in some way (just as a theatre restricts access to movies in order to sell tickets). We can certainly argue about tactics – is the Post worth paying for, is this the best way to sell it, could that generate more money than online advertising. (I don’t have any of these answers, of course.) But the idea that the Post has no right to restrict the availability of its content – or that doing so “breaks the web” – is just stupid.