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."
What is the benifit on their side for the public to register to read articles online? Just to be able to sell their emails?
What? You actually give them real information??
What?
business in meatspace, and try to move it to cyberspace, (I hate that word)
But you like the word "meatspace?"
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
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.
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.
...and only in the US would describing a newspaper as "liberal" be reagrded as a criticism!
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