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.'"

Comments

Thank God

[Mad Martigan]

I used to read the Times Editorial page once, twice, sometimes three times a week. Until Times Select. Then it was, "Krugman? Friedman? Who?" Putting the content behind that wall made the Times' columnists practically irrelevant. For better or worse, the Times has some of the most talked-about columnists in the country, and their importance evaporated almost instantly when the unwashed masses (me) could no longer read them. I, for one, am more than happy to look at a picture of a car or a book or whatever a few times a week if it means (in some small way) invigorating the national conversation.

Crossword?

[FlamingLaird]

The question is whether they're going to free the crosswords. Not to shortz the rest of the paper... but that's what everyone really cares about.

OK, but its nice to have the option

[AaronLawrence]

Personally I like to have the option to pay for no ads. As I do on slashdot (mind you the slashdot cost is very low).

Although these days there is less point paying for a single publication/site. NYTimes seems good, but as a non-citizen it was never enough to pay for...

Re:Great!

[vtcodger]

***Now we can actually read all those articles that are lined from Slashdot!***

You could have anyway. Registgration is free, and if you get your back up about that, it'll take you about five minutes with Google to find a publically posted login and password that will work.

What's more important maybe is it sounds like they have opened up the archives. Maybe now if you want to find out about how good a job Donald Rumsfeld did in his first term as Defense Secretary in the Ford administration or want to track down details on CDCs suite against IBM, you can do so without spending a fortune.

Of yeah, and now I think we can read the columnists. that's a mixed blessing for sure, but Krugman's economic views are widely respected and it's annoying to have to wait for someone to break copyright and post them elsewhere.