Atlantic's paywall struggles underscore dilemma facing midsize publishers: Opinion
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It wasn’t that long ago that everyone thought you could save media by bringing down paywalls at publications. Content wanted to be free, or so went the thinking, and digital advertising wanted to be expensive. In 2008, The Atlantic, a legacy publication with a reputation for digital innovation, embraced the wisdom of crowds and took its wall down. But then digital ads got cheap, and publishers started to build new walls. So in December 2017, Bob Cohn, The Atlantic president, announced that starting in January visitors to its website would pay the equivalent of “one fairly nice cup of coffee” to read more than 10 of its articles per month.
But the paywall didn’t go up in January. Or in February. Or that year. And then a couple of weeks ago, Digiday reported that The Atlantic had indefinitely postponed its launch. Cohn blamed a shortage of technological product staff, and said The Atlantic would double the size of its team this year. “We made a decision to go back to first principles,” Cohn explained. “We realized that we only had one chance to get it right.”
A post-pivot pivot
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