I hope The Times' paywall works and not just because it offers free-to-air blogs like ConHome new opportunities. It was James Forsyth who pointed me to the customers of Starbucks, clutching their £2-a-go coffee frappuccino and a free copy of the Metro. If people are willing to pay for such luxury drinks I think they should be open to paying for quality journalism too. The £2-a-week it costs to access The Times online is worth it (and not just for my semi-regular column!).
It's far from clear if The Times' great experiment is yet working. Figures released today suggest over 100,000 people are paying to read the newspaper's websites but as Malcolm Coles blogs, many of these are, including him, one-off payers. It's early days, however, and The Times will be hoping, over time, to convert the likes of Malcolm Coles to regular subscriptions and these subscriptions will be worth more than the drop off in online advertising revenues.
I have two recommendations for the high-ups at The Times.
First they should devise a PayPal-style passport that allows people to subscribe to The Times and then use that payment passport to also get behind the News of the World's new paywall*. If NewsCorp own the newspaper payment passport it will open up possibilities for all sorts of future micropayments. The current payment mechanism lacks flexibility. My guess is that Rupert Murdoch's boffins are already working on this but I was surprised it wasn't introduced at the time of the paywall's erection, given the many months that passed between the announcement of it and its arrival.
My second recommendation is to free The Times' blogs from the paywall. Danny Finkelstein's Comment Central blog, for example, was an important part of the centre right conversation. It was. Now, costing pounds to access, it doesn't get much link love. It's also noticeable that Danny doesn't blog so much. That's a shame for us and, I guess, for him. If The Times' blogs were free their columnists would feel more part of the internet conversation. The blogs could also be used to promote the paid-for content. DannyTheFink, David Aaronovitch and Rachel Sylvester could use blogs to summarise their op-eds and lure people into subscribing.
* I've tried twice unsuccessfully to subscribe to the NotW.