NYT rewards its paying users with subscriber-only content

NiemanJournalismLab reporting:
Subscribers to The New York Times got a surprise in their inboxes this afternoon: a story-behind-the-story about the paper’s coverage of the death of Osama bin Laden, penned by the weekend editor who’d been helming the paper’s news coverage when it was announced that the terrorist leader had been killed by American commandos.
The story is the first, the email notes, in an ongoing series of occasional newsletters — created for subscribers, and for subscribers alone, as, ostensibly, a “thank you” for their subscriptions. As the Times puts it (we’ll save you the ALL CAPS):

This Story Behind Behind the Story e-mail newsletter from The New York Times newsroom has been prepared exclusively for Times subscribers and is the first of an ongoing series you’ll receive as part of your subscription.

The Times’ pay models, both of them, have been based on the walling-off (or metering-off, as it were) of existing content; this seems to be a case of the Times creating new content only for its subscribers. And it’s meta-content: a story about how the Times reported a story.

I’ve reached out to the Times to learn more about the mechanics of the newsletter, which seems to be dribbling out to (at least) print subscribers this afternoon. (Some of my questions: Is it being delivered to digital Times subscribers too? How often will the newsletters be sent out? Will the stories contained in the letter — the Osama backgrounder looks oddly formatted for the page and PDF-like — live anywhere on the web or in print, or are they email-only? Will there someday be ads against the newsletters?)

http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/06/the-nyt-rewards-its-paying-users-with-subscriber-only-content/?utm_source=Daily+Lab+email+list&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=004e565e73-DAILY_EMAIL