To be fair, apparently a lot of that cost had to with bringing their print subscriber database up to date and integrating it with the web subscriber system. Still seems nuts to me though, but I have no real way to judge.TheoSqua wrote:If the system uses cookies to store the monthly pageviews i'm pretty sure I could show you 100 developers that would have happily written this for 10 grand.
I don't understand how it cost anything clost to 40million. 4million would still be an absurd price.
$400,000 would likely be paying top-dollar for every aspect of the development. $5m for marketing and promotion maybe.......I just don't see how those numbers add up.
Apparently, they considered a membership model a la public broadcasting and rejected it, though doing it this way may have some of the same properties. I like the iTunes comparison, but I'm not sure that has been much of a success for musicians, and I'm not sure this will be a success for reporting. Quasi-charitable payments are not sufficient.greenback44 wrote:It sounds like the NYT has two types of revenue in mind here. The first type comes from the public broadcasting-style of reader who wants to support NYT because they've earned that support through journalistic excellence. The NYT is putting a number on the suggested donation, on the theory that concrete terms will encourage people to donate on a regular basis. Maybe iTunes is a better comparison than NPR.
