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The other week, Cablevision revealed that it would shift Newsday.com from a free website to one that charges for its content, given the declining fortunes of newspaper industry. Now the NY Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger says he is considering "incremental" charges at the NYTimes.com website. At an event at SUNY Stony Brook, Sulzberger discussed the print industry, “The immediate future looks, at a minimum, grim. Traditional revenue streams are anemic and getting worse." The NY Times has had various approaches for web revenue: Charging non-subscribers, charging international visitors, charging for editorials and opinion pieces... An analyst tells Crain's, “The Times has taken this position of ‘we’re free, we’re the biggest news site on the Web' If they make a mistake and confuse people again, the Times will have pulled defeat from the jaws of potential victory.”
NY Times May Go Back To Charging For Online Content
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It's the same media that NEVER mentioned Muslims' hatred of Israel as a possible motive for 9/11.
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How incremental is incremental? Is this like the "micro" charges that were proposed in a cover story in Time Magazine a few weeks back?
I don't think print subscribers will have to pay, at least I hope not.
I would pay for access to the NY Times on-line. I wouldn't pay a lot, nothing like the print subscription price. Would $30 a year satisfy, Sulzy baby?!
I'd pay for the NYT too, I read their content everyday and they've actually made a very rich site in terms of multimedia, video, slideshows, interactive content, etc.
Not to mention anyone who values quality content over just content should support a serious organization like the Times. Blogs are fun to read but I want to get my news from a real organization, not some guy or an online tabloid.
I'd pay $30 a year for sure.
Exactly. This isn't like 10 years ago, when the site was probably not so hot, and people were still getting their web legs. Now the on-line edition of the quality papers has built its own reputation, independent of the print side, and I think they could probably get away with charging something without scaring away all their readers.
The NYT already did this, it was called TimesSelect, it was a total flop, and it was dismantled about two years ago. Does no one remember this?
http://www.nytimes.com/marketing/ts/index.html
I don't think i'll pay because there is so much free news out there. Certainly, it won't be NY Times quality, but news is news. Although, i may be singing a different tune when they start doing it.
Hasn't the online ad industry already figured out that the incremental revenue generated by paying subscribers is negated by the reduction in advertising impressions due to the inability for search engine spiders to crawl password-required subscription content?
Does the Times's "quality" include stuff like their propaganda in favor of invading Iraq?
I don't think Sulzberger would be satisfied with $30 a year from subscribers. Besides, people now have a taste of free NYT content, so charging a substantial fee for online content that may at times seem only marginally better than what you can get for free wouldn't attract enough subscribers to make it a success. Maybe I'm wrong, we'll see.
Anyway, it looks like their best days may be behind them as well as every other newspaper in this country. It's sad, but compared to other changes coming in the future (environmental, social, financial, etc.), the loss of newspapers may not be that bad. It's just an evolution of information dissemination.
Future conversation between two people:
Bob: Hey, John, remember when people lamented the passing of newspapers.
John: Yeah, Bob, I remember. It worked out pretty well. (holding his folding AMOLED display with the NY Times on it with the headline: "New York Under Water").
The Kindle subscription is cheaper than the paper paper but not cheap ($14./month).
Would you pay $9/month? That sounds reasonable, but it would be more than $30/year that others have mentioned in this thread. The NYT company (~$3 billion in annual revenues) has a bunch of business interests, so I don't know how much the paper itself brings in, but if 1,000,000 people around the world sign up for it, that's over $100 million incremental revenue a year...
I remember that they used to have a plan that cost about $5 a month, which gave you access to their entire archive. It was free to students and educational institutions, and was great. Now it costs like $3 to read one article from 1964. I would love it if they were to bring it back.
NYTimes online context sucks. I wouldn't pay $5 a month if it meant receiving this drivel: http://fort-greene.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/at-a-local-candy-store-but-where-are-the-mars-bars/#more-623
Without a paper what would you do on the train? Kindle?
www.forgotten-ny.com
I'd not put Kindle under a pooping doggie, or try to line a bird cage with it. While NYT has perfect format for both tasks.
What about the Times' deal for Google to scan all of their archives? I've never seen anything come of that.
I'd pay if they'd stop killing us with all those "weekender" ads. But I wouldn't pay much because, while I'm "fluent in 3 sections", I'm not affluent in any of them.
I much prefer reading the actual, tangible, newsprinty version of the Times (or any periodical) to reading anything on my computer screen. When I buy a copy of a newspaper, I am pretty likely to read almost all of it. When reading on a screen, I might read a few articles, tops. My job does not involve sitting at a desk all day; I work in a hospital. Maybe everyone who reads the Times in its entirety does it while at work. I can't even imagine coming home from work and curling up with my MacBook for an hour+ to read all of the Times. I couldn't buy enough eyedrops for that lifestyle.
I've paid for the NYTimes print edition many times, but I would definately not pay for it's online content. There are plenty of other places to get news. If they want to do well, they are going to need to up the traffic to their site (like with better content) and get more advertisments. Thats how other news medium are doing it, and that's proven successful.