Despite relaxing paywalls, publishers like Bloomberg, WSJ and The Atlantic see subscription spikes

There may be fewer niche communities online and lower intent to pay for a subscription

Two really tangible take-aways: 1) they don’t care so much about individual viral articles as they care about creating direct, habitual readership, 2) long discounted trial periods work well to move people from ‘interested’ to ‘loyal’.”

At the core of this is a debate on whether The New York Times, The Washington Post and others are failing the American people by pushing more content behind the paywall.