Treating You Like an Adult for $19.99 Annually

Andrew Sullivan is taking The Daily Dish to a metered-use/subscription model. There are a few interesting things about this, one of which is that the new Dish will be ad-free. The New York Times online subscription content is ad supported, in contrast, as are print newspapers and magazines and cable TV.

In his post describing the transition, Sullivan writes that dependence on advertisers leads to prioritization of page views and requires extra staff time and energy to solicit big ad buyers. With regard to the second point, I can't imagine that Sullivan and his team would have much trouble attracting the attention of big advertisers or proving the site's commercial potential.

Regarding page views, this concern highlights the relationship between advertiser interests and content. Advertisers need not explicitly dictate the content of media in order to shape it. In the case of web advertising, the desire to maximize page views for the sake of advertising revenue can reshape content decisions in a range of ways: from click-heavy slideshows to misleading headlines and salacious stories. See, for example The Huffington Post, where a front page link today reads "Oh S*%@! Meredith Viera Slips Up".

Depending on subscriber revenue alone can allow the Dish to report on Meredith Viera swearing or not, depending on the writers' and audience's interests, instead of an endless need to have readers click on provocative links.

The big question, of course, is whether relying on subscribers alone will provide satisfactory revenue. Andrew Sullivan is a great candidate to try this model. I think his success though, would have greater implications for large media outlets than for bloggers generally.