THE NEW YORK TIMES has celebrated the first anniversary of its paywall by adding another few bricks to it.

Visitors to its website will now be obliged to pay up after they read 10 articles per month, down from the original limit of 20, suggesting it is now even less scared of shedding traffic (although there are still multiple ways to circumvent the wall).

The company also revealed that NYTimes.comand the website for the International Herald Tribune have racked up a combined 454,000 paid subscribers.

“We knew that readers placed a high value on our journalism, and we anticipated they would respond positively to our digital subscription packages,” said Arthur Sulzberger jnr, chairman and chief executive officer of the New York Times Company, in a display of confidence that is hard to disprove.

Media groups that are rather less sure of themselves continue to cheerfully make “we know nothing” admissions on the direction of their sector’s business models.