Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Now we can actually read all those articles that are lined from Slashdot!
You can get the article here.
If they opened up the archives, their website would instantly become *A LOT* more useful.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Money for nothing, pix for free
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.
... turning to the 3-D map, we see an unmistakable con
Putting your most influential op-ed writers behind a pay wall is a sure way to make their voices irrelevant in the Internet age.
Where do I sign up to read the announcement?
Full Tilt
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.
"42"
Unfortunately their innovative Times Reader appears to be pay-only as of yet.
One would think that there are two sure-proof things NY Times could do to secure large audience for their advertisers.
1. Their image as a respect newspaper, not just NY, not just US, but world-wide. Their journalists are respected, and their content verified, their analysis intelligent.
2. Better presentation than the average site.
Well, Times Reader is that point 2. If they gave me the reader for free, I'll most likely to there for my shot of news and editorials, since it's simply better than browsing a web site.
And hence, the NY Times won't have to compete with the other blogs and sites as much as if they remained free only in-browser.
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...
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
I do not believe all information on the internet is supposed to be free (in terms of price). Wayyy back in the 90's before the internet was mainstream I had a paid subscription to NY Times, even though they were 2-3 times more expensive than my local paper, because I felt the quality was so much greater and was willing to pay for that quality. The newspaper still had ads from revenue back then, but I still had to pay for it and was willing to do so.
Fast forward to today and I still believe that - the news quality of a NY Times piece is still premium quality, but the difference now is that the news is 100% paid for by advertisers. My conscience is making me turn off my browser's adblocker plugin when I go to NY Times's website now.
I left America several years ago to live in London and one of the few things I miss was the straight to the point of dull news from the New York Times and their thought-provoking columnists. Putting a third of the paper - and the most unique elements of the paper - behind a paid wall seemed to be a one-way ticket to irrelevance. I can read wire stories for free anywhere, but the editorial and op-ed pages really do influence the American national discourse - keep them open-access for all to read, discuss (or completely dismiss and ignore).
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?
"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."
Why?
For chrissakes, no matter what you think of the paper as a journalistic entity, nor what you think of its editorial decisions, nor what you think of its columnists, it really is the newspaper of record for the United States.
They have an extraordinary breadth of content. Why can't they just "copy stories and pictures from the newspaper"? If anyone in the media business would be able to generate bulk traffic (read: advertising $$) from sheer content without any particular bells and whistles, it would be the website that simply mirrors the staggering amount of content from the NYT.
Add to that a searchable archive of the NYT going back to the beginning, and I frankly can't think of a single media outlet in the world that could match it for comprehensive historical information on daily events pertinent to the United States.
Huge content, daily updates, impeccable credentials - yeah, who'd imagine THAT could draw significant pageviews?
-Styopa
I'd agree that The New York Times tries to appear to be left wing, and on inconsequential matters it may succeed, but mongering for war the last time I checked was definitely not a liberal persuasion.
It isn't just the constant news coverage citing "unnamed sources" in an effort to implicate this or that group of Muslims in various imagined transgressions, even after they promised to swear off using unnamed sources, it's deciding to wait until after the 2004 election to tell us about Bush's illegal wiretapping, or not telling us about the 9-11 Commission Report citing American support for Israeli atrocities against Palestinians as the reason for the attack, or continually over-reporting acts of violence committed by Muslims against Jews while under-reporting acts of violence committed by Jews against Muslims (did you know that Israelis have killed nearly four times as many Muslims as vice versa? My point exactly.)
When you put it all together -- and by no means is the above a comprehensive list of their transgressions -- a picture emerges of a paper driven by racism and allegiance to Israel above all things, including America.
Everybody goes on about the corporate media when talking about media support for this war, well, here's some news: The New York Times is by far the worst offender in this regard, and it isn't corporate-owned at all! It's a family paper.
Ad Block them. Starve the war machine. Kill the propaganda machine before it succeeds in killing us.
The New York Times is indeed right-wing, and Fox News even more so. There are no mainstream left-wing newspapers in the USA anymore.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."