A year ago, it was hardly unthinkable that a math wizard like financial economist David X. Li, who derived a now-widely used mathematical formula, might someday earn a Nobel Prize. Today, though, in the midst of the biggest financial meltdown since the Great Depression, Li is probably thankful he still has a job in finance at all.
I’m not sure why the micropayments-as-the-savior-of-journalism meme seems to have taken off of late, but I’m glad there are lots of people trying to squash it: I’d particularly recommend Gabe Sherman and Clay Shirky. But in the case of Steve Brill’s “secret memo” on the subject, it’s worth responding to some of his specifics.
Wednesday, over a very tasty seafood lunch, I watched Felix Salmon spend two hours trying to convince FT.com managing director Rob Grimshaw to abandon his newspaper’s attempts to get its readers to pay for online content. He did not succeed.
Jordan Golson can’t be happy: Nick Denton has cut the amount of money he gets per thousand page views to $6.50 from $9.75. That’s a 33% pay cut, on a per-page-view basis. What about on an absolute basis?
Well, the page-view rate is set on the basis of the previous quarter’s page views. Total Q4 page views were 9,132,723, while Q1 page views rose 34% to 12,234,604 . The 33% cut matches the 34% rise in page views, right? Er, no.
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