• The New York Times, Wednesday, April 6, 2011 11:33 AM

Just in case you were wondering, reports that The New York Times Co. spent north of $40 million to build its digital paywall are "vastly wrong." So insisted Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger during an interview this week with Bill Grueskin at Columbia University.

"I'm happy to tell you it's vastly wrong, it was much less. Don't use that number. It's not accurate," Sulzberger told Grueskin according to paidContent. Though, as paidContent notes, "He wouldn't get into the specifics ... and missed an opportunity to set the record straight."

Rupert Murdoch' News Corp, by contrast, let it be known that it expects to spend $30 million on The Daily through the end of this fiscal year, with a run rate of nearly $500,000 a week. Pressed about the complexity of the pay plan, Sulzberger said: "We're going to learn, adapt, make it simpler. But I don't agree that it's too complex."

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