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New York Times Ends Its Paid Subscription Service
Mike writes "The New York Times has announced that it will end its paid Internet service in favor of making most of its Web site available for free. The hope is that this move will attract more readers and higher advertising revenue. 'The longer-term problem for publishers like the Times is that they must find ways to present content online rather than just transferring stories and pictures from the newspaper. Most U.S. news Web sites offer their contents for free, supporting themselves by selling advertising. One exception is The Wall Street Journal which runs a subscription-based Web site. TimesSelect generated about $10 million in revenue a year. Schiller declined to project how much higher the online growth rate would be without charging visitors.'"
Money for nothing, pix for free
Then it was, "Krugman? Friedman? Who?"
Thankfully Friedman has been available on Youtube.
"If they opened up the archives, their website would instantly become *A LOT* more useful."
Sigh. But not to this crowd, who can't be bothered with reading beyond the headlines. From the FA:
Starting on Wednesday, access to the archives will be available for free back to 1987, and as well as stories before 1923, which are in the public domain, Schiller said.
Hmm, looks like they are "open" if you want to pay $4.95 per article. They give you a very brief, incomplete abstract but if you want the whole article, you have to pony up.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Just wanted to reply to some people:
1). "The archives should be free"
The archives for the last 20 years are now free. Those over 60 years (public archive) are also free. The ones between 20 to 60 years ago are the only ones you get charged for.
2). "I'd pay extra for ads free/The TimesReader should be free"
The TimesReader is still a charge for service, but it contains no ads. This is probably why it isn't free. The big problem is that it is "Windows Only", so Linux and Mac users can't use it. (Yes, I know you can run a Windows emulator, but that's not the point!).
About a decade ago, the idea of paying for your webpage with ads and actually make money seemed silly. "That would never happen." "IIt was a dot.com pipedream". Now, as the New York Times discovered, subscription services are simply not as profitable as ad supported websites. TimesSelect made money, but not as much as if the content was free. Plus, now that it is free, Google searches are more likely to include New York Times articles.
Any bets when the Wall Street Journal will drop its subscription service?
According to TFA the archives from 1987-Present and 1851-1922 (public domain) are going to be free.
There's more info in the NYTimes' own article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/business/media/18times.html
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/20214963