NYT digital subscription plans as Kickstarter project backer levels

Apart from curiosity about what the New York Times forecasts for the project and how they arrived at same, I really don’t care one way or the other about the upcoming New York Times paywall.

However, the paywall’s convoluted pricing cries out for taking the form of Kickstarter project backer levels. I haven’t done justice to the NYT plan and have done injustice to well-crafted Kickstarter project backer levels I recently admired. Apologies to all.

NYT Paywall as Kickstarter Levels

Addendum 2011-03-22: Thanks to Kickstarter for appreciating and blogging about this post. I didn’t mean to suggest “the whole thing would work best as a Kickstarter project: funding goal + tiered reward options + the assurance that you will only be charged if they do indeed survive the death of print/revolt of the internet” but that’s certainly correct! For some of the reasons why, extrapolate from Timothy B. Lee’s two recent posts on the paywall, Shoe-Leather Reporting at the New York Times and Misguided Moralism in the Paywall Debate. For a future with good journalism, Kickstarter is of far more relevance than any paywall.

4 Responses

  1. […] “NYT digital subscription plans as Kickstarter project backer levels,” by Mike Linksvayer. Okay, so there’s not much to read — but if you’re a […]

  2. […] if they do indeed survive the death of print/revolt of the internet. Behold his original post here or check out the meat of it […]

  3. […] Illustration by Mike Linksvayer […]

  4. […] poked fun at paywalls, but for a paywall, LWN.net’s is simple and well done: most new articles are subscriber-only […]

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