Good reads – 03 31 11 (NYT/Times paywalls)

Catching up on a couple of necessary reads on paywalls

1. Ken Doctor on the economics of what he calls the “pay fence” at the New York Times, which has adopted a carefully claibrated “metered approach” where people will only pay after a certain period and can find content in many ways that circumvent the fence/wall.

2. Alan Mutter on the same issue, cautiously suggesting the NYT content may be strong enough to make the wall work, but also warning that that does not mean that media outlets with less unique and compelling content–specifically other newspapers–can succeed.

3. Frédéric Filloux is considerably less sanguine, arguing that “The New York Times paywall is like the French tax system: expensive, utterly complicated, disconnected from the reality and designed to be bypassed.”

In all this mixed with some travelling with little web access, I almost missed the release of new figures from News International on the number of paying subscribers to the London Times website and tablet versions–journalism.co.uk has the numbers, Roy Greenslade a dose of skepticism.