Wait, the New York Times Paywall Is Working? Not So Fast, Mr. Blodget

bnet.com reporting:
The New York Times made the right decision in erecting a paywall, if you ask Henry Blodget of Business Insider. He points to the fact that the company has a total of 100,000 subscribers following the erection of its new paywall and an uptick in print subscriptions, which a NYT executive told him on background.
Blodget says, “I told you so.” Not so fast. The numbers he’s citing are really preliminary, the NYT is still heavily discounting its subscriptions, and this purported gain in print subscribers is way too ambiguous to carry the argument Blodget is clearly dying to make.
... Crank the arithmetic and you see that the Times’ current paywall may, at best, be delivering roughly what Times Select did. That’s not good news, because TS wasn’t considered a big hit, to put it mildly. And as the company notes, there’s no way to know how many of those discount subs the NYT will retain, or how many previously freeloading Web readers might actually buy subscriptions.
The real question underlying all this is whether the trade-off between digital and print subscriptions, subscription revenues, ad revenues, and operating costs improve the NYT’s position. If a too-expensive paywall brings back some print people but doesn’t increase digital subs substantially,  the Times will still be hurting.
Is it? Too soon to tell, really. Which is why Blodget’s over-eager lunge at “rightness” is not only premature, but dangerous. To claim success for the NYT’s paywall on such thin data is to effectively lull the industry back to sleep when it’s never been more important to stay on high alert.
http://www.bnet.com/blog/technology-business/wait-the-new-york-times-paywall-is-working-not-so-fast-mr-blodget/11153