New York Times

In two thousand eleven, the New York Times was dying slowly. Print advertising had dropped fifty-five percent in five years. The industry consensus was absolute: readers won't pay for news online. Paywalls don't work. Everyone who matters has already left. The Times didn't listen. They launched a paywall anyway. Twenty free articles per month, then subscription required. Within three months, two hundred twenty-four thousand people had subscribed. The economics were staggering. One dollar per subscriber versus one cent per ad impression. A single subscriber was worth what used to take one hundred impressions to generate. The Times had built a moat. The readers willing to pay weren't the masses.