Farhad Manjoo of The New York Times explores why five-year-old tech news site The Information is successful at charging for its content.
Manjoo writes, “Consider Ms. Lessin’s plan for The Information, the tech news service she started in 2013 after spending eight years at The Wall Street Journal. Back then, online subscriptions seemed antiquated; many companies had experimented with charging users, but most had failed to win large numbers of subscribers, and the big money in media was in ad-supported sites aiming for rapid expansion through viral traffic.
“‘People thought no one would pay for news, especially tech news,’ Ms. Lessin told me last month. ‘The problem was the news business hadn’t been focused on a key question: How do I deliver a differentiated product that people would pay for?’
“Her idea for differentiation was to charge a lot for The Information — a subscription is $399 a year, close to what The Wall Street Journal charges for print delivery — but she would offer readers quality instead of volume.
“The Information publishes just two or three stories a day, often scoops and analysis, including a handy daily roundup of the most important stories in tech that day.”
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