NY Times May Go Back To Charging For Online Content

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.

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'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.

What about the Times' deal for Google to scan all of their archives? I've never seen anything come of that.

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.

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

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.

The Kindle subscription is cheaper than the paper paper but not cheap ($14./month).

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").

Does the Times's "quality" include stuff like their propaganda in favor of invading Iraq?

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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 don't think print subscribers will have to pay, at least I hope not.

How incremental is incremental? Is this like the "micro" charges that were proposed in a cover story in Time Magazine a few weeks back?