Slashdot Mirror
NY Times Op-Ed Page Goes Subscriber-Only
kevinatilusa writes "The New York Times has announced an expanded subscription service to be launched this September. Subscriptions will cost $49.95 per year and include access to both the Times archives (currently available on a pay-by-the-article basis) and to the paper's op-ed columnists (currently available for free, but probably not for long). The Times also posted a more detailed explanation (registration required) for their decision."
As expected. Seems the NYT is going more and more subscription oriented. I must really ask...What is the benifit on their side for the public to register to read articles online? Just to be able to sell their emails?
Does this mean in a short while the only source for free online commentary is going to be blogs?
Lets take an Ad based media business in meatspace, and try to move it to cyberspace, (I hate that word) but heres the kicker, instead of being and ad based cash flow, lets be subscription based.
Somehow I don't see this working, and I am fairly sure taht the subscribers still get nailed with ads even on the older articles.
On the other hand, full access to their archives is worth a few bucks a year (think 20), but their OP page is worth less than the electrons needed to display it.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
...Slashdot will finally stop linking to NY Times articles? Regardless of bugmenot.com, the whole registration thing just didn't go over well. There's plenty of other news sources besides NYTimes. Plenty!
You can go anywhere on the web to find opinions on most any issue, nearly all of them freely accessible. Instapundit on the right, Daily Kos on the left, and million smaller sites in between.
In a web that's overflowing with opinions and analysis, much of it well-written, the NY Times thinks people will pay $50 a year to read theirs? What are they smoking?
Here is what will happen after the Times initiates its plan. Some corporate customers who already pull archived articles off will sign up for this $50 program and find they also have access to the Op-Ed page. Whoopdedoo!
But my bet is like four people in the US will pay the $50 a month for the sake of accessing the Times' Op-Ed section. If you can't sell the news online, you definitely can't sell opinions. And keep in mind that a huge portion of the Times' readership now comes from web surfers. What this means is that the Times has just voluntarily traded away much of its enormous political influence for maybe $200 a year. Amazing.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
The blogosphere is the next great playground in the marketplace of ideas; it's the closest thing to our forgotten history of town-hall meetings and individual participation that most of us have ever experienced. It's participatory mass media, a totally new thing that is remaking the political landscape -- not least by revealing whole new ways for major political organizations to form themselves and raise funds.
And the NYT has just opted out of the whole thing. That shiny new FUTURE thing? That's scary. We don't know how to make money off of it. So we'll give all that business to our competitors like the LA Times (which tried a similar stupid scheme and quickly recanted).
While registration does bug people many of us will deal with it (if only by using bugmenot) in order to discuss the ideas behind the firewall. Salon seems to be doing OK with ad-based day passes. But fifty bucks a year for the content of one paper based fifteen hundred miles away from where I live? What if all the other newspapers of interest started charging a similar amount? No thanks, guys. As Atrios said, we have too much to sort through as it is. We can get along without the NYT's columnists.
But how will the NYT get along without the buzz of bloggers discussing their content? I guess the answer is "like a local paper." If that's what they want to be, I guess someone else will step up to be the Newspaper of Record.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
I emailed the new York Times in response to this decision of theirs. Here is their reply:
Thank you for contacting New York Times On The Web.
We appreciate your feedback.
We remain committed to providing the majority of the content from The New York Times on the Web to our readers at no cost,
including our Editorials, Letters to the Editor and core news coverage.
However, it is becoming increasingly important to develop additional, sustainable revenue models to support our online business operations.
The details surrounding TimesSelect will be finalized over the next few months.
However, we will share your comments with our colleagues.
Regards,
Jason Fairchild,
The New York Times on the Web
Customer Service
www.nytimes.com/help
May 17, 2005
NYTimes.com to Offer Subscription Service
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
The New York Times announced yesterday that it would offer a new subscription-based service on its Web site, charging users an annual fee to read its Op-Ed and news columnists, as the newspaper seeks ways to capitalize on the site's popularity.
Most material on the Web site, NYTimes.com, will remain free to users, The Times said, but columnists from The Times and The International Herald Tribune will be available only to users who sign up for TimesSelect, which will cost $49.95 a year. The service will also include access to The Times's online archives, as well as other features.
The service, which is scheduled to start in September, will be provided free to home-delivery subscribers of the newspaper.
A decision by The Times about charging users for portions of its Web site had been expected for months in the media industry. While some efforts by other newspapers to charge for content online have worked, others have been withdrawn, including most recently one by The Los Angeles Times, which decided last week to stop charging users a fee for its online entertainment listings, reviews and criticism.
Though advertising on Web sites accounts for only 2 to 3 percent of the revenues of most newspapers, it is the fastest-growing source of revenue. Still, many newspaper Web sites fear that charging money for Internet content may send readers to free sites, with advertisers following close behind.
The New York Times's decision to charge a fee came after about a year of study, said Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of the Times Company and publisher of the newspaper.
Mr. Sulzberger said that while some Internet users accustomed to free content might not be willing to pay, many others would be attracted by the online package of columnists, archives and other material.
"The advertising growth on the Web has been just spectacular the last few years," he said. "But like any business, it's going to mature over time, and when that happens, it will flatten and then you'll get into the normal cycles just like we do it on print. And at that point you're really going to need to have another revenue model."
He added, "This is going to help sustain the quality of the information that we make available."
Alexia S. Quadrani, a senior managing director at Bear, Stearns who follows the publishing and advertising industries, said The Times's plan made sense as a business model.
"All newspapers are looking for new advertising revenue and The New York Times realizes they have high-quality content and are looking at other ways to capitalize on it," she said. "The key is to that you want to maximize the dollars you get on the Internet without alienating the people."
In April, The Times's Web site had 1.7 million unique daily visitors. Its daily newspaper circulation in March 2005, the most recent month available, was 1,136,433.
The Times already charges for some content, including its crossword puzzle, news alerts and online archive. Articles are free for seven days after publication; a fee is charged once they are archived.
TimesSelect will also provide subscribers access to TimesPast, the paper's archives; exclusive multimedia, including audio and photo essays and video; TimesFile, a tool that will help users organize articles; and Ahead of The Times, which will allow subscribers to take an early look at articles that will appear in The New York Times Magazine, and the newspaper's Travel, Sunday Arts and Real Estate sections.
Martha Goldstein, a spokeswoman for The Los Angeles Times, said the paper still might charge for certain portions of its site.
Caroline Little, publisher of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, the online media subsidiary of the Washington Post Company, said a fee is "something we're looking at very carefully," but added, "there haven't really been a lot of successful ventures."
The Wall Street Journal, which is the
There is more political commentary on the Web than anyone has time to read. It is the height of arrogance for them to think their editorial page is so important that they can do what no one else can afford to. I read the NYT op-ed every day, but I'm certainly not going to pay for the privilege of reading Thomas L. Friedman phone it in.
Their news reporting is another matter. There aren't many organizations in the world with the resources to rival the NYT's reporting. But this is what they plan to give away! Stupid stupid stupid.
They should do what Salon is doing: Offer a day pass to anyone willing to watch a 30-second ad. Sell an ad-free, year subscription for, I guess, $50. In addition, continue to charge a premium for access to the archives (which Salon doesn't do, but Salon's archives aren't quite as valuable as those of the NY Times...)
But of course they can't go with someone else's proven business model, because they're the NY Times and they're smarter than everybody else! Bunch of wankers. Can't wait to see them crash and burn, then hopefully learn from experience. God knows they've got enough cash sitting around for a failed experiment or two.
Except that there really is no such thing as a free lunch.
Good media costs. It costs because you need to get people over to where the news happens so they can see what's going on; it costs because if you're using local people, you need to figure out how they get the news back to you. It costs because, well, running a large organization costs money.
You can basically either increase income or decrease expenses. You see companies decrease expenses by moving away from good journalism and relying more on talking heads, Crossfire-style anchor antagonism, and demagoguery (ref Fox). You can see companies increasing income by, say, charging either more for a charged item or starting to charge for things that are free. You also see companies using more ads on-line, but of course this is Slashdot, where we value our God-given right to surf ad-free (and I'm not arguing against it).
There aren't that many real sources of news, and a whole bunch of people referencing them. Here's a hint: Google News is *NOT* a source of news. As companies find that they can't be profitable (enough) with real journalism, they'll stop doing real journalism. What then? Do we rely on blogs? Feel free, but blogs aren't journalism any more than the op-ed part of the NYTimes is the NYTimes.
(Yes, yes, I know, I'm about to get flamed by a bunch of wankers who'll claim blogs are the only impartial source of news they need)
Unlike many here, I believe the NYT opinion page is worth money (unfortunately, I'd put the price point at $20 rather than $50).
Just the other day I went to a talk at MIT by Thomas Friedman where he talked about his book on globalization. It's all stuff we're pretty familiar with, but I don't think your average person spends time thinking about the impact the developing world and countries like India, China, and Russia are going to have on our economy. In fact, even I learned a considerable amount about the topic, like a fascinating set of details about the fact that companies are turning more and more into marketing shells and sourcing their supply chains to companies like UPS and others overseas. Overall I came away blown away by the insights I gained about such a complex problem.
The thing to note about this is that even the best bloggers aren't going to have access like this guy. He spent months in India, China, and Russia researching his book. He talked to leaders of countries and companies (he talked about Fiorina specifically). And his analysis was all the deeper for it.
In the end, I'd say blogs are a great resource for your latest infohit and some cheap (and very occassionally deep) commentary. But I believe the NYT op-ed page will remain relevant, and I'm going to miss it.
You can't install an ad-blocker in your head in meatspace
I don't see any ads when I'm wearing my tin-foil sunglasses.
My other first post is car post.
I have been an on-line Op-Ed NYTimes reader for many years now. The pieces represent the full political spectrum from the left (Krugman) to the right (Brooks). The pieces are very well written and highly intelligent. Unfortunately, $50/year is kind of steep for my budget, so I will deeply miss this source of information.
However, I understand their reason for targeting the Op-Ed pieces. They are usually the "Most E-Mailed Articles". Over the last 7 days, for example, Op-Ed articles were 11 out of the 25 most e-mailed articles.
The Wall Street Journal, which requires a paid subscription (worth every penny, by the way, as will the NY Times subscription also surely be), has essentially removed itself from Google's index. Now I realize that the NYT already requires registration, but the effect of these attempts to monetize access is to partition the knowledge on the Internet into many small fortresses.
Wouldn't it be great if every article published in the NY Times for the past 150 years were indexed in Google? There would be a thousand really interesting uses coming out of the woodwork, uses that we can't even imagine without trying it.
Yes, I know, they need to make a living, but please, let this information be free. If the searcher/finder of record (Google) is barred at the gate from the paper of record, we're losing something really valuable.
I used to be a newspaperman, and now I fight for free speech on the Internet. I wish we could find a way to honor both of these tremendously valuable traditions.
Long term, cutting that off (because only a very small fraction will bother to subscribe) is in my view going to cost the paper more in reputation that it'll gain in short-term revenue.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
People like Friedman et all largely use the NYT as a source of personal publicity, to gain a larger "mind share" for their opinions. This is usually towards the end of publishing, TV apperances, or other ambition.
The NYT charging will eliminate much of the influence that the the op-ed page once held with the people who consider themselves influential. People with a good deal of economic and intellectual psuedo-might to drop around.
In the end, the columnists at the NYT will not be able to set the agenda like they are used to doing. Previously, it was the newcasts - national and local - that took the queues from the NYT, and this put whatever they were saying "into circulation". Now, people like Druge, the Daily Kos folks, Instapundit, LGF, Powerline, TNR, Townhall, Freerepublic, and all of them have a big sway into moving things into the mainstream.
Basically, circulation or readership equals influence. And this is going to cut circulation drastically, which will affect influence nearly identically.
I take it you haven't read any bylines on NYT recently (ever?). Unlike most papers, the NYT writes virtually all their own articles.
I was thinking the same thing. Let 'em go, its not like we can't find the same articles ad nauseam on the ole internets. The NY Times lost its credibility years ago and there is nothing that separates them from the rest of the pack. So bon voyage on your trip towards internet obscurity.
Nicholas Kristof. The most intelligent and insightful opinion writer alive. If you don't curently read him, you should.
He is a liberal, but he is very reasoned and thoughtful. Unfortunately, reasoned and thoughtful doesn't generate the controversy that partisan and inflamed do. So Krugman and Brooks get talked about, and Kristof just keeps writing the smart copy.
...and only in the US would describing a newspaper as "liberal" be reagrded as a criticism!
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------