NY Times To Charge For Online Content

Hugh Pickens writes "New York Magazine reports that the NY Times appears close to announcing that the paper will begin charging for access to its website, according to people familiar with internal deliberations. After a year of debate inside the paper, the choice has been between a Wall Street Journal-type pay wall and the metered system in which readers can sample a certain number of free articles before being asked to subscribe. The Times seems to have settled on the metered system. The decision to go paid is monumental for the Times, and culminates a yearlong debate that grew contentious, people close to the talks say. Hanging over the deliberations is the fact that the Times' last experience with pay walls, TimesSelect, was deeply unsatisfying and exposed a rift between Sulzberger and his roster of A-list columnists, particularly Tom Friedman and Maureen Dowd, who grew frustrated at their dramatic fall-off in online readership. The argument for remaining free was based on the belief that nytimes.com is growing into an English-language global newspaper of record, with a vast audience — 20 million unique readers — that would prove lucrative as web advertising matured. But with the painful declines in advertising brought on by last year's financial crisis, the argument that online advertising might never grow big enough to sustain the paper's high-cost, ambitious journalism — gained more weight."

Comments

Oh well

[mrphoton]

Oh well, I just won't bother reading it then. I will read www.bbc.co.uk or www.telegraph.co.uk or theregister.co.uk or www.zeit.de or cnn.com or slashdot.org or www.dailymail.co.uk or and the list goes on.

Re:Oh well

[thetoadwarrior]

The BBC's site may always remain free. Perhaps it's not really an issue these days but if they were to charge those outside of the UK then they would have to ensure that their GeoIP code works flawlessly and should they be able to charge licence fee holders purely because they went to France on holiday and want to check the news or because their mobile phone contract may have been purchased from a neighbouring country?

I would imagine it's easier for the to keep it as is and if everyone else does a pay wall then that's just more business they'll get looking at their ads on the international versions.

Re:Oh well

[bfields]

My hometown newspaper had a reporter who would go to all the high school football games, take pictures, and do a writeup on the scores. Really, you're paying someone to do that?

Yeah, I can see how that kind of thing could be "crowdsourced", actually.

I'm more worried about the people that go to, say, local planning commission meetings. It's skilled work to follow that sort of thing and be able to give an interesting factual account. My fear is that the only "volunteer" coverage we'll see of that kind of thing is by people with an axe to grind and without necessarily a great grasp of the basics.

Re:Oh well

[T Murphy]

One of the roles of the news media is to be a watchdog for the government. The Chicago Tribune frequently digs up dirt on Chicago Mayor Daley's government, and their editorial board loudly advocates change in the local government. Considering one of the charges against Blagojevich is that he tried to force that editorial board to be fired, they must be doing a great job. Unfortunately a small paper attempting investigative reporting would just get shrugged off, but the Tribune has weight behind it. A strong newspaper can keep the government more honest, and is one of the best ways to defend democracy from the government.

I should note the Tribune dislikes Murdoch, so don't equate them with his "reporting".

Re:Oh well: me, too

[stfvon007]

Well up to a few years ago my City's bus service was in trouble. In the past 4 years though they have completely turned the service around. In the past 4 years, every price change has been a price cut, while going from being in debt to record surpluses.

They did that by simplifying the costs, making it easier to ride eliminating transfers (Including in seat transfers when the buses traveled between different sections of the city, making it possible that you would need to "transfer" up to 2 times while never exiting the bus) and only charging per ride and passes for unlimited rides for a certain period of time.
Unprofitable routes are now now mostly paid for by businesses on those routes in exchange for having preferential bus stop placement, or having the bus even pull into the companies parking lot at peak times for people arriving and departing.

The NYT could make it easier to pay for the articles (Text a code to a number, and 25 cents is added to your phone bill) Make it so sections covered by other newspapers are free, and have the nitch articles be paid, have all you can learn plans, offer early access to articles to companies in fields the company reports on at a premium subscription rate.

Re:Good luck with that

[Marcika]

Good luck with that. It works for the WSJ because the WSJ reports actual news; investors will not tolerate op-ed rants being passed off as news because it would make the WSJ worthless for financial analysts.

As a financial analyst, I call bullshit on that. Serious investors don't rely on the WSJ alone, exactly because it is full of brainless neocon op-eds, and gratuituos deliberate political spin even in its news articles. Anybody with a brain wouldn't rely on it for political/economic coverage, even if it often gets some basic company news right (though even there it doesn't hurt to double-check with the FT, or Bloomberg News, or the Economist or some other more reputable paper).

Re:NY Times can do it, can your paper do it?

[raju1kabir]

now the internet is awash with blogs and such that are almost exclusively other people's opinions. The way I see it it will only become more and more difficult for the NYT or any one else to convince readers that their columnists are so much "better" than the average blogger.

Many (but definitely not all) big-name columnists' opinions are in fact "better" than almost everyone in the blogosphere, for a few key reasons:

• They have access to decision-makers
• They have more to lose if they fuck up
• They are knowledgeable about the subject
• They have been doing this for a long time, and have historical perspective
• They have editorial oversight and legal departments to keep them in line

I'd trade 500 bloggers for 5 Times columnists any day of the week.