Culture

Oh No, All Your Favourite New York Magazine Websites Are Going Behind A Paywall

Yep, that includes Vulture and The Cut.

by Patrick Lenton  26 November 2018
New York magazine

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You know what absolutely sucks? Having to pay for stuff that we enjoy. Nothing gets my goat more than rewarding someone’s labour with my own hard-earned dollar. Capitalism sucks! So, you can bet I’m steamed about New York magazine and their horrible new paywall.

Paywalls — some call them the death of content, others simply think of them as another obstacle to hack their way through. We are a country of rampant pirates and thieves after all.

And now New York Media, the parent company of beloved content creator New York magazine has announced they will adopt a paywall by the end of November.

Included in the paywall is NYMag.com and New York magazine’s verticals The Cut, Intelligencer, the Strategist, Grub Street and Vulture.

The digital subscription will cost $5 per month, with a “dynamic meter”, which replaces a static paywall based on a set number of articles. As they say in their announcement:

“Readers will be prompted to subscribe based on a combination of factors, including the types of stories they read, depth of visits in a particular vertical, and breadth of use of the sites, and they will be alerted as they approach the limit of free articles.”

“We want to allow for discovery and exploration of our sites, while putting a value on the journalism we produce,” explained New York Media’s CEO, Pam Wasserstein. “We’re aiming to separate casual browsers from super-fans, and forge a deeper relationship with those fans who are passionate about what we do.”

“New York has expanded far beyond its namesake city, both in its scope of coverage and audience, but the New York way of looking at the world remains the common thread through all that we do,” adds editor-in-chief, Adam Moss. “With this new subscription offering, we’re hoping to introduce more readers to the breadth of our coverage that has the same sensibility and journalistic quality.”

Boo! I love Vulture. But also: fair, I guess.