Slashdot Mirror
New York Times Exploring how to Charge for Content
Mr. Christmas Lights writes "According to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times is
mulling subscription for Internet Archives. It doesn't appear that the free (but subscription required - BugMeNot to the rescue!) ability to read NYT articles less than a week old would change. However, instead of paying $2.95 per article for stuff that is more than a week old, one idea being floated is an annual fee of $49.99 for unlimited access to anything in the last year." (More below.)
Mr. Christmas Lights continues "The WSJ has been pretty successful with their online subscriptions - over 700,000 people currently pay $79 ($39 if you get the print edition) a year for full online access of the last 30 days of articles - the story above happens to be in their public area. But they are a notable exception, with media organizations struggling to charge for News now that it is widely available for free on the Internet. For example, Slashdot recently discussed the AP's plan to charge members to post content online. Will the "GoogleZon" end up replacing the 4th Estate as depicted in the entertaining and informative 8 minute EPIC video?"
In the Netherlands there are already paid subscribtions for online content of newspapers. For instance the Volkskrant offers a subscription for receiving the paper newspaper only on saturday and on weekdays you can watch the articles online.
I live in the DC area, so the Washington Post is my big local paper. I subscribe to the Sunday edition (its like $10 for 10 weeks). All I really want is the "bag o' stuff" that comes with it, full of ads, comics, Parade, etc. The rest of the paper I prefer to read online. I wish they'd give me an option of paying for the bag of stuff. I don't mind supporting them, but I don't want to create the waste of me having a physical paper I don't want to read.
So Washington Post people, if you read this, and you do because you've quoted people from Slashdot in articles, sell me the bag o' stuff by itself and you can keep the money you would've spent on printing my Sunday paper.
...for them to get it right.
First of all, the $2.95 per article is nuts. That plan should be DOA.
Now think of how much it costs them to print millions of pages of dead-tree copies of their newspaper. There is enormous potential for the NYT to cut costs by switching (not entirely, of course) to a web/subscription content delivery model. Not to mention the positive effect such a move would have on the environment.
For a 'progressive' press mogul like the NYT, a leaner, greener newspaper makes sense.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
The best way to do this is via a google (or microsoft) micropayment system. Sort of like millicent .. except it's not as intrusive and is integrated with google desktop and internet explorer. Instead of having to fill out a form and address everytime .. a user can have a monthly limit of $25 (this limit can be by the broker themselves since they dont want to be over liable .. they can also restrict that companies or individuals cant get paid more than a certain amount from any one individual .. other anti fraud schemes will also be needed) .. anyway .. the point is that with a IE or google desktop integrated micropayment system .. it should be possible for individuals to sell music, tv shows, movies and other stuff. There needs to be an Open DRM standard though .. or musicians won't play along. Maybe the standard can be haxx0red or whatever .. thats inevitable .. but the casual/easy copying has to be made difficult in order to encourage people to actually reward the artists of songs or tv programs they like.
These guys are dumber than dirt.
Why charge at all for outdated content? Don't they remember the old journalistic saying that today's news is tomorrow's fishwrap?
Put the archives up for free -- that way people will link into them and pump up the Times' search-engine juice. Then sell context sensitive advertising on the old stories a la Google AdWords. Hell, the Times has an entire ad staff -- they could come up with their own contextual-ads program, cut out Google, and keep all the money for themselves. And advertisers would pay a pretty penny to get placed -- you don't think a spot on a NYT story about bicycles, say, would be attractive to a bicycle manufacturer? Especially if that story wasn't behind a paywall, so it got enough Google-juice to get pumped up to the first page of search results for "bicycles"?
I bet they'd make an order of magnitude more money that way than they ever would off selling subscriptions to the archives...
Read my blog.
If you haven't read the WSJ on a regular basis, you don't realize what you're missing. I had a microeconomics professor require us to subscribe and read it daily, and I must say I was better informed about things that I had ever been in my life. It beats radio, television and most other newspapers by huge margins.
Also, the problem with self-selecting news it that you risk becoming ignorant and closed to things you don't already have an interest in.
This is worrying because the NYT is considered one of the 'most reputable' newspapers in the world. For example: I do a bit of work for The Center for Cooperative Research. This is an open source website that is designed to create timelines about US politics by following news stories. To make the timelines as 'legitimate' as possible, we are encouraged to use NYT articles. Now that public access is restricted, it is making it more difficult for this open source project to continue with broad 'legitimacy'.
This is my last post.
[6th Estate]
In the offline world, newspapers and magazines charge for the current issues while the archives are freely available through libraries. Why should it be reversed in the online world?
It's completely backwards to make the current week free and the archives Pay-per-view or subscription-only. It makes much more sense to charge a subscription to the current news (whether to access the current day, the current week, or the current month), and make the older stuff freely available. First of all, there's a lot more people interested in today's news than in last year's news, meaning revenues would be higher. (That means more money for the low IQers in the audience.) It fits in line with the offline business model. It meets the customer's expectations better. And it makes the whole site more Internet-friendly.
Frankly, I don't understand why more sites don't follow that plan. Charge for access to the current week (the most valuable content on your site on any given day) and, after that, let the bloggers and everyone else have at it for free.
Google cache
Dear NYT,
I just let my WSJ subscription lapse. Why? because of the total lock-down of discussing the conntent with others. The Economist on the other hand I am renewing, even though most of the content is free. Why? I value the content, and the material is open for others to see, with the exception of specific business intelligence.
Where do you stand dear NYT? I would say with the Economist. If you keep the news free, open up the past, and charge for all of the other stuff--arts, magazine...--I would likely pay and more importantly, continue to pay.
Do not do focus groups on this! Find out the retention rate--renewals--for these publications, and find the model that fits. Lets hope that it's not the WSJ! One year relationships suck.
I wish I had some mod points, so I could mode this up as Funny! That's the best joke I've heard in months.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
The NYT can charge whatever they like for their news, either in print or digitally. That's what free markets are all about. If enough customers raise a stink about the subscription price, they will go elsewhere.
But, if the NYT wants to use digital news (and news archives) as a revenue stream, they will need to (eventually) digitalize their entire news archives, not just for the previous year. At that point, even I would consider subscribing (and I am a tight-wad.)
As someone in the newspaper archiving business I can tell you that it does cost quite a bit for the newspapers to handle the archiving, storage, and sales of archives online. Add to this that they usually aren't doing it as a feel good service to their readers, but as an additional revenue stream and you find the prices mentioned in the article are about average.
They also have to track usage and somtimes pay royalties to their article sources which is added into the price.
Don't forget that most people looking for older newspaper articles are doing research, not reading the news, and paying a small fee to get the one or two documents they really want doesn't bother them at all.
Online for up to half the cost of the print medium (7-day in-city subscription rate), and here's why:
I can only get delivery at $3/week sunday only - that's $150 per year for one day a week's paper.
They have to put the whole thing online somewhere anyway, that's how newspapers are made today (I still like to think it's Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell doing it all at high volume, but alas...) They've already paid the mortgage on the infrastructure, the part of it that makes things public html costs not as much as all of the tech they need in order to get the paper out every day. This is a lot like the phone companies cutting prices once everyone saw the internet model and realized that they didn't have to run a special/new wire from my house in CT to so-and-so in CA so we could talk. They don't have to wake someone up to create a web page just because I logged on.
They won't get a lot of people who are online-y to cart a pile of paper home no matter how attractive they seem to make it. (and "attractive" seems to mean raise the out of town prices to horriffic levels - how come USAToday costs the same all over the country but NYT seems to be delivered outside of NYC by gold-plated burros who eat caviar? Hint - distributed printing)
So I'll (and lots like me'll) will get their news online somewhere, but not at paper-based prices and weights.
They'll have me at up to half subscription rate. There's a sweet spot there somewhere. It's fair, it's not the smug "information wants to be free" half of the argument. Maybe it's a mexican standoff, but they won't get me at print, and I can get news lots of places for free.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I'd certainly pay $50/yr for access to the archives. I read the NYTimes daily online, from work, and love it. And I get the print version at home. But there's many times I'm talking to someone about something, or I see something happen in the world, and I think "hey wasn't there a NYT article on that"? But then I can't get to the article without paying $2.95/article for articles older than a week, or whatever they currently charge. Which... I'm not going to do. Somewhere in the $30-50/yr range for unlimited access to the archives seems reasonable to me though.
-Daniel
The Slashdot "info should be free" crowd is dead wrong on this. Certainly that would be best for YOU the consumer, but not best for NYT, which is point of the article. There is no reason to make the archives free since the paper itself is already free.
Who is their audience? Researchers who are generally looking for one specific article, and people who need the resources often. I think they should do both plans, and probably more - a monthly plan, a subscription to just one section (like "Business section" for $15 a year), etc. But I think the single articles will sell more, at around a 4 to 1 ratio to subscriptions.
Remember also the unlimited year pass is just for the previous year. NYT has quite lucrative contracts with Lexis Nexus and others which obviously makes them good money and obviously charges a steep amount for access. They might not even be legally able to "go free" with the archives depending on their contracts.
I can see an interesting side effect coming up if NYT decides to do this, especially at the cost figure they're proposing.
Specifically, I could see a move like this being a shot in the arm for public libraries, especially if it sparks other newspapers and news agencies to do it.
Consider: You could either pay the fee and access the thing from your home system, or you can exert a little effort and hit up your local public library. Access to the same material would (likely) be at no extra cost to you. Heck, you wouldn't even have to pay for gas if you took public transit.
Even if, for some reason, you still need Internet access, many libraries have free wireless. The Seattle main (downtown) library, as one example, has both wired and wireless Internet access available at no charge to its patrons (note that VPN only works if you use Cisco LEAP or Microsplatt's PPTP).
Keep the peace(es).
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
One of the problems that the NYT is facing is that we no longer live in an age where information is scarce.
Up until a few years ago, regular, in-depth, quality information about what was going on in the world was only available to the average person through a few sources - The daily newspaper was chief among these sources followed by radio, tv, and magazines.
Now, with internet access becoming ubiquitous people have more news/information than they can deal with. We are practically drowning in media. The question is: Why would we want to subscribe to another source of information?
There is a niche for the NYT. That niche is in limiting and filtering information. The paper needs to market itself as a relief from information overload.