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NYTimes Confirms It Will Start Charging For Online News In 2011
jmtpi writes "The article is frustratingly vague, but the New York Times is confirming earlier speculation that it will start charging online readers who visit the site regularly. Occasional users will still get free access to a certain number of articles per month. Most of the key details are not yet determined, but the system is scheduled to be deployed at the beginning of next year."
The Times is planning on rolling its own pay system, and it will doubtless use the rest of 2010 to look at how sites like the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times fare before deciding on specifics. How often do you readers typically hit articles at nytimes.com in a given month? We try to avoid linking to stories behind paywalls when possible, and if the Times chooses a low monthly limit, you'll probably see a lot fewer links to their site — which would be a shame.
Cue "OMFG They're so irrelevant!" whiners.
Frankly, it's about time. They spend millions a year to produce a product (written news stories) and they have two delivery formats for said product: One, a pay product printed on dead trees, which accounts for the vast majority of their revenue. And two, a free digital product that doesn't make shit, with the added bonus that it makes their paying product worthless.
Seems like a no-brainer. Now, the question becomes, will they charge a fair price, or will they pull a record company move, and try to charge the same for a physical and a digital product?
One thing is for sure. If it works out for them, you're going to see tons of print outlets following suit.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
There are plenty of sources that are as reliable - if not moreso - than the Times. It is not the paper it once was IMO.
The New York Times sees a massive drop in readership. What the market is actually willing to provide with advertisements wasn't good enough for them...
Shh.
I hope and wonder if people who subscribe to print/paper version will get free online access. If they don't it will be pretty greedy. I believe Wall Street Journal provides free online with a paper subscription.
Like, you won't be in business by 2011.
So, this statement is irrelevant.
There are plenty of other sources of free (decent) content available on the internet, at least of similar quality. Obviously, we'll see what the market thinks of all this.
Of course, I'm sure it will be trivial to game the website anyhow.
Yeah, I don't care that much if and absolutely positively have to read a story in the Times. I've got a button for that.
That they'll make a hojillion dollars more than they'll lose in setting up and maintaining their paywall, and in reduced advertising revenue from all the eyeballs that they'll lose?
Really? That's some serious hubris they're pitching there.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
But the big issue with the NYT is that despite being a global player, it still has this New York focus that makes it less useful for those of us not in New York. The BBC does truly global coverage, and there's no American equivalent. NYT is the closest we have, but they're going to have to do more to prove that they're a global player and not just a regional paper with really good national and international coverage before I pull out my wallet.
Occasional users will still get free access to a certain number of articles per month. Most of the key details are not yet determined
Wait, is that key details in the ARTICLE?
Scientists warn of a deadly meteor that will hit the earth in 3 days striking the state of (register to read more)
Summation 2
Back when NYTimes had set up a paywall/registration-required site, I never wanted to go through the hoops to get to an article. After they stopped doing that, it was just sort of habit not to read articles on the site. So why change now?
Towards the Singularity.
NYT's narrow focus and fraudulent (Duranty, Blair) reportage have made it a paper for morons.
Good riddance. Good fucking riddance!
It was just confirmed that in 2012, the NYTimes will be out of business and for sale!
Maybe it's different for a bigger news outlet like NYT, but I'd say it's about time. Dozens of News paper printing companies have long and done this many years ago (including Wall Street Journal many years back) and even the podunk news outlets in my midwest state. Anymore, I can't even read local news around here unless I pay for it online or catch it on the 6 o'clock or 10 o'clock news. I've long grown tired of dipshit delivery kids throwing my paper in a snow bank, at the end of my 30ft driveway or leaving the paper on my doorstep without a plastic bag in the rain.
Let me first thank everyone who's submitted an article to Slashdot with a link to something I've written. The comments are almost always a great gift and I look forward to reading most of what people write, especially the ones who RTFA.
My only request is for everyone to be open to new ways of paying for the synthesis of information. It is very difficult for humans to compete with the robot link farms and the casual content created on places like Facebook. If we want people to synthesize we have to find some way to come together as a society and fund them.
I realize that it's attractive to look at the almost non-existent distribution costs of digital content and imagine a world where information can be completely free, but this avoids dealing with the costs of creating it in the first place. We need to find a good way for everyone who consumes content to effectively share the costs of creating it. If we don't, the information ecosystem will collapse.
Please be open to the writers and publishers who are going to try out more mechanisms for distributing the costs among the consumers. Try them out and reward the ones that deliver something of value. Ignore the ones that aren't worth your time. But please don't dismiss them out of hand.
Finally, I want to point out a piece I've written about some of the downsides of the free ecosystem for information. Perhaps this might suggest that there are some advantages in embracing a paywall, at least occasionally.
http://www.wayner.org/node/67
"There's a lot of things you could use to kill a guy with. You could probably beat a guy to death with a Sunday New York Times!"
Does the Times ever actually contain timely news articles that slashdot would need to link to? I can't remember the last time I even looked on their site
I don't pay for access to news (unless looking at ads counts as paying). Few single news sources cover a high enough percentage of the kinds of stories I am interested for me to allocate actual money to said sources. I'd like access to Nature, and New Scientist, and a number of technical sources, but rely on "second hand" access as other free sources report on *their* stories. Given that I rarely complete covering these summaries in a day before I have to actually deal with life in the real world, I don't think it is worth my money to get access to things I don't have time to ready anyway.
The Fate of any news service behind a pay wall or limited free pay wall is obscurity. No news story in the NY Times can remain exclusive to the NY Times unless nobody cared about that story in the first place.
But I like the idea that they are going to "wait and see" how others will fare over the year. I don't have to wait, I can tell them their growth and revenue will be flat at best. Them kind of returns are not going to excite the NY Times, and I'd bet in the end this will never really happen.
- which would be a shame.
Is this the slashdot mafia coming out? "Nice article. Shame is something were to... happen to our link to it."
Seriously, Slashdot hasn't been able to slashdot anyone for years. Stories that would have thousands of comments a few years ago receives maybe a hundred today. Do you think not linking to NYT from Slashdot will make them reconsider? Hehehe
Most people are missing the point. What we're witnessing is the buggy whips in the age of automobiles transition.
Newspapers and Magazines are the buggy whips of our times, fighting to stay relevant in an age that has passed them by.
When Katie Curic asked Sarah Palin what newspapers and magazines she read, Palin should have responded "I don't read Newspapers, I read the news on the internet", and mentioned that all the news stories of the day have been driven by sites like Drudge, LittleGreenFootballs and Daily Kos, and Huffington Post, not by NYT or Washington Post.
The traditional "National News Media" is fast becoming irrelevant, because information dissemination is faster than a Newspaper can be printed.
Information is moving (literally) at the speed of light (Internet). By the time NYT puts it on the front page, it is often 24 hours too late to be of much use.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
And for those who love the paper, and want to read it, but hate to pay(I am talking about those who read it every day but refuse to even register) I am sure there will be a way to scramble the data so it can be continued to be read for free.
OTOH, one can a promotion such as a free year to the NYT with the purchase of an Apple branded reading device.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Slate did this, the NYT should talk to their management about lessons learedn.
They used to be a popular well read site that decided that a paywall was the way to, regardless of what their readers told them. They later added an interactive ad that you had to get through as a means of allowing people to visit without paying. By the time the word they changed back to an ad based site for free the damage was done. By then it was too late and a fair part of their user base had been alienated and simply moved on.
How many people would be surprised that Slate is no longer a pay site, and you can simply read it without any hoops? I would imagine a fair number of people as they probably haven't visited the site in years. For the meanwhile, the damage has been done and Slate is a shadow of their former self.
I've said before, and I'll say it again, the news is a commodity, if you want visitors you have to differentiate yourself against Reuters and the Associated Press. You can either do that with original reporting and or a better experience. Adding a paywall only works with a substantial investment in one or both, witness the Wall Street Journal which has original repoorting of high quality for an example and has been behind a paywall for years.
I wonder if this is the result of Vivian Schiller leaving to head NPR. When she was the head of nytimes.com, she pushed to make all the content free (getting rid of Times Select). And now that she's been gone for a little while, it looks like they're reverting back to their old ways. Too bad.
It's either this or continue the slow boil. However, I would be more willing to spend my cash for an aggregation service like Google News or something similar. I use the Internet to get my news not just because it is convenient, but also because the number of sources I can easily review gives me broader coverage. I have no idea if the Times play will be successful, but I do think they need to examine their business - they aren't just a newspaper company anymore, nor is CNN television news anymore - they're both in the business of news and opinion in general, and are thus competing on similar playing fields. Perhaps the answer lies in "partnerships" - I would pay for a news partnership that included World, National, and Local news that consisted of, say, MSNBC, The New York Times, and the Denver Post. I have no idea how feasible it is - this is just my $.02 on what I would pay for.
I regularly read The Times, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail (I apologise in advance; it's just that I like to know what Fascist Britain is getting up to from time to time) online. I wouldn't read any of these if they were behind a pay wall. I did subscribe to the FT for a month (a free month) but what was contained therein was not compelling enough for me to actually give them a monthly sub. I can get free news elsewhere, e.g. the BBC online website (leftist, ethnic-peace bicycle politically correct news I grant you, but news nonetheless) and various blogs.
The fact of the matter is that most people when compelled to pay, will simply move their viewing elsewhere. As long as there are places to get news online free of charge, pay-walls won't work for the masses. I guess the next step of course, once the pay-walls have gone up, is to claim copyright over any and every story to prevent publication in blogs!
"Good luck with that!"
I try to avoid the NYTimes website as much as possible since there are so many other available resources that are IMO better.
"Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash
One of the last times I watched TV, I saw Curic ask Sully Sullenberger if he prayed while he was ditching his plane into the river. He was gracious - I, on the other hand, was shaking my head in disbelief at such a stupid question. She gets over $15 million a year to ask stupid questions and read the news?!? Life is not fair. Say what you will about Fox and CNN, but at least they get babes to read the news - they make no pretense about the talking heads being "journalists" - any asshole can read copy.
My parents and in-laws look at me in disbelief when I say I get my news off of the internet. In five minutes, I can skim the headlines, get a days worth of HLN, and I don't have to watch advertisements. As far as content, and this goes for the papers too, they dumb it down so much as to make it BS.
The Economist, the FT and the WSJ are not free. However these are specialist magazines aimed toward people who need opinions and news in finance. I do not see how the NYT will find a niche of people who are willing to pay a subscription.
What the analysis is probably missing is that, like many people, although I am subscribed to The Economist, the FT AND the WSJ:
- 1 - I am more or less forced to read these since it is a part of my job
- 2 - The average reader of these magazines is earning more money than your average NYT reader
- 3 - I am not paying for these, my company is paying the subscription so I do not care about the price
In finance, you have specialized magazines such as Risk and Credit which subscription is about a thousand quids a year, and the price of the subscription to the FT is almost irrelevant (except it cannot be higher than the printed version).
I do not think that many NYT reader will get a subscription trough their job.
However they may succeed to implement a system of micropayments to get a bunch of articles, although my intuition tells me that most of people will just switch to a different news source. As long as there is not a monopoly (an oligopoly to be exact) and someone is willing to provide news for free, you will not be able to sell them, it reminds me of the music industry and piracy although the system of low payments from iTunes worked.
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
This "free/paid-for" model absolutely extends to web operations.
I disagree. As I understand it, people who pay for text on the Internet expect, as a condition of such payment, not to see animated advertisements alongside that text.
The New York Times - All The News That Fits, We Print
As opposed to News Corporation - When News Breaks, We Fix It. (Why else would MSNBC's Keith Olbermann call it Fixed News?)
What will happen is that readers will get their news from other sites, e.g. theglobeandmail, cbc, bbc, cnn...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Here's a link to some more coverage - a couple more details about what they're planning.
I'm okay with paying for the New York Times. I agree the quality of their articles makes it worth it. Lengthy, well-researched content costs money to produce, and people like myself and the rest of the Internet thrives on the professionally-produced news. Without it, Slashdot and my blog would have much less to link to.
Where I am against this is the implementation. New Scientist magazine and the WSJ have both gone the metered/subscription route. So if I want to access their content, that's two sets of usernames and passwords to keep track of, and payment for content I'm only reading incidentally because I got referred to it from another site. Add the NYT's to this, and it's three sites I have to manage and pay for.
The proper solution was for the newspapers to establish a single-access paid-for system where we can access all their content and have the papers get paid a percentage based on the popularity of their content. They are apparently shunning this logical strategy for an anarchy of individual strategies that will confuse, frustrate, and drive away consumers.
I love newspapers, I want them to succeed, and I think this old push-media strategy is going to drive away more readers than it will convince readers to pay for content.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
The NYTimes just announce they will start charging in 2011. They went on to say they will begin bankrupt proceedings in 2012.
As this article at The Atlantic points out, the NY Times makes more money from subscriptions than from advertising. If they can get enough money from subscribers then they don't need to worry about page rank, hits, click-throughs, etc.
Best Slashdot Co
Fuck the NY Times and their revenue stream. Fuck copyright infringment. After all, this is Slashdot, godammit. Information should be free, right?
Here is the full article text for all of you fucking thieves who would actually agree with the above statement:
The Times to Charge for Frequent Access to Its Web Site
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
Published: January 20, 2010
The New York Times announced Wednesday that it intended to charge frequent readers for access to its Web site, a step being debated across the industry that nearly every major newspaper has so far feared to take.
Starting in early 2011, visitors to NYTimes.com will get a certain number of articles free every month before being asked to pay a flat fee for unlimited access. Subscribers to the newspaper's print edition will receive full access to the site.
But executives of The New York Times Company said they could not yet answer fundamental questions about the plan, like how much it would cost or what the limit would be on free reading. They stressed that the amount of free access could change with time, in response to economic conditions and reader demand.
Any changes are sure to be closely watched by publishers and other purveyors of online content who scoffed at the notion of online charging until advertising began to plummet in 2007, battering visions of Internet businesses supported solely by ads. Few general-interest publications charge now, but many newspapers and magazines are studying whether to make the switch.
Still, publishers fear that income from digital subscriptions would not compensate for the resulting loss of audience and advertising revenue.
NYTimes.com is by far the most popular newspaper site in the country, with more than 17 million readers a month in the United States, according to Nielsen Online, and analysts say it is easily the leader in advertising revenue, as well. That may make it better positioned than other general-interest papers to charge -- and also gives The Times more to lose if the move backfires.
The Times Company has been studying the matter for almost a year, searching for common ground between pro- and anti-pay camps -- a debate mirrored in dozens of media-watching blogs -- and the system will not go into effect until January 2011. Executives said they were not bothered by the prospect of absorbing barbs for moving cautiously.
"There's no prize for getting it quick," said Janet L. Robinson, the company's president and chief executive. "There's more of a prize for getting it right."
This would not be the first time the company has attempted an online pay model. In the 1990s it charged overseas readers, and from 2005 to 2007 the newspaper's TimesSelect service charged for access to editorials and columns. TimesSelect attracted about 210,000 subscribers who paid $49.95 a year but it was scrapped to take advantage of the boom in online advertising.
Company executives said the current decision was not a reaction to the ad recession but a long-term strategy to develop new revenue.
"This is a bet, to a certain degree, on where we think the Web is going," Mr. Sulzberger said. "This is not going to be something that is going to change the financial dynamics overnight."
Two specialized papers charge already: The Wall Street Journal, which makes certain articles accessible only to subscribers, and The Financial Times, which allows non-paying readers to see up to 10 articles a month, a system close to what is planned by The Times.
Most readers who go to the Times site, as with other news sites, are incidental visitors, arriving no more than once in a while through searches and links, and many of them would be unaffected by the new system. A much smaller number of committed readers account for the bulk of the site visits and page views, and the essential question is how many of them will pay to continue that habit.
Executives said the computerized subscription service must work smoothly an
I'm curious how they intend to implement this. A workaround might be as simple as deleting some cookies, a trip to bugmenot, or using a leaked university / company-wide password.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
I have been paying for Wall Street Journal Online for possibly as long as 10 years. Robert Murdoch, who purchased it a few years back, has been changing the pay model a lot to maximize revenues. I'm likely to unsubscribe over the next month or so for the first time since I first began using their online service instead of paper. Here are the changes that have made it worse for paying customers:
1> Added advertising for paid subscribers. 2> Confused what is free and what is paid for. This is a never ending moving target. It is very confusing when you try to share something with non-subscribers. 3> Huge price increases at renewal time that I have to renegotiate over the phone. 4> They throw their video content on the home page, which you go to about 20 times a day. On laptops I use all day in an office environment, I have volume muted so do not benefit from this. Yet, it freezes Firefox while it downloads the content for about 20-30 seconds every time I click on the home page. I've asked them to remove it, to no avail. 5> Announced that blackberry access will no longer be included with regular online access. Separate fee required. This, to me, is the straw that is breaking the camels back, and why I will unsubscribe as soon as this goes into effect.
It is sad to see the NYT follow the WSJ's lead in this. I'm willing to pay for content, but they really do need to find a model that works and stick with it instead of changing it every 3 months. They are pushing long-time paying customers like me away.
Erik
Open Standards Portal
Just charging for everything wont work as long as there are other outlets (as numerous people have already pointed out).
People visiting the site to get a quick look at the latest headlines won't pay for it. Real editorial material though, could possibly be sold. You could have a section of the paper open to subscribers only, while the free site covers only the agencies news stories. Sure, 99.9% of visitors would not buy the premium subscription, but they still need the volume for the advertisers. Second, we have only discussed these media as "online" and "paper" which is too limited. The online media is starting to take on other forms. Perhaps access to an iphone app or mobile site could only be available to subscribers? E-book readers another possibility to charge a premium. Basic *News* however is just information, and when presented in a normal web browser, the same information is available just a click away.
On a sidenote, the paper and online formats are only competing with eachother in a very small area: the places where the paper format is sold!
In an insightful column by Froma Harrop, she points out that
Google includes links to the whole article, but not before including "snippets" that will suffice as news for many time-pressed readers. Here's an example of the words that Google News recently ripped from the Associated Press: "President Barack Obama on Wednesday promised an all-out rescue and humanitarian effort to help the people of Haiti overcome a 'cruel and incomprehensible' tragedy, the ruinous earthquake that ravaged the ..." Note that the AP, not Google, had paid someone in Haiti to write it.
Google says that those few lines involve "fair use" of the copyrighted material. Its critics, most famously media mogul Rupert Murdoch, call that activity "stealing content."
It's tough to argue with that logic. As much as I am an advocate for the "information wants to be free" camp, someone is paying to generate the news, and Google isn't helping matters by acting as a wholesale purveyor of content (and profiting off their actions as well).
You mean now I'll need to go to one of the other 10,000 sites to find out what The New York Times transcribed from the spokesperson of whatever administration happens to be in power? Oh, lordy, lordy, what WILL I do?
I get most of my online "news" from news aggregators and social websites where friends have provided links to things to read.
If sites start charging for content, they will drop off of the aggregators and my friends will stop posting links because even if they can read them they will know that their friends probably don't. Thus the pay sites will drop out of my visibility.
If it is important enough, someone will copy-and-paste it.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
see title
What is that?
Oh yeah. Way back, when it had some credibility, this might have been a remote possibility. Today, when it has as much weight as the NY Post?
My sides are killing me from the laughter...
What's funny is how many people here are saying that this is a good move for NYT. They'll probably get a few thousand subscribers, keep it going for a year or maybe two tops, then either backpedal to a free model to avoid going bankrupt, or just go bankrupt and ask for a bailout. I don't see this being a success as even a remote possibility. Not on the free internet.
The problem with most new revenue models being applied to content is their willingness to overcharge.
Think about it, if you want people to try bondage you don't immediately bind and gag them to the point of severe restriction of blood flow. You start out light. Maybe a little playful paddling. Then you build slowly to full bondage and dripping hot wax on their genitals.
These revenue models should work the same way: start by charging a low price, and see what sort of revenues you get from that. Build from there.
I also advocate micropayments. Don't be closed to the idea that a niche article might be a hit with a certain group of people (eg, bondage fetishists) who will each pay $10 (there are thousands of us). The average piece of content isn't something I feel would be worth extra payment, but not a day goes by that I don't find at least one thing on the web I'd gladly throw at least a dollar to the creators for.
But if you do micropayments be prepared to let the rest of us participate. A comment on an article might be where I want to reward the effort, and if I can't I'll be reluctant to reward the article's authors either.
If mainstream online newspapers would actually provide quality, researched articles instead of the usual nonsense, I'd be willing to pay. Instead we get, and I paraphrase:
"A young woman and her child narrowly survived plummeting 20 feet from an embankment while driving to the young child's grandmother's house, says an officer who has asked to remain anonymous because he has not been given leave to talk by his supervisors.
The officer said the woman lost control of the car which slid off the road and over an embankment where it came to a rest in a gulley some 20 feet down.
Paramedics were on scene however the woman refused treatment for both herself and the child. It is unclear why the woman lost control. The road in that area is fairly straight."
1) It's not really news...people have minor accidents all the time.
2) You can't plummet 20 feet, especially when you're not falling, but merely driving down an embankment.
3) No valid, cited sources of information.
4) No information for public service about the cause of the accident.
There's just nothing worth reporting. Take a couple hours until someone real wants to talk to you, then print.
This all comes down to a question of value. The Economist and WSJ can get away with charging for their content because there are enough professionals who actually stand to *make money as a result of the information they read in it.* News and opinions, on the other hand, don't have economic value. Sure, they're interesting, but there's no economic differentiation versus merely getting the facts from CNN or whatever.
When the NYT was available for free, I used to log on once a day and read 2 or 3 articles. When they launched Times Select, I stopped reading it and got most of my news from the BBC. When they made everything free again, I started reading again. Honestly, if I had to pay a subscription fee to every news site I read on a daily basis, I'd be spending hundreds of dollars on news a year. It's not worth it to me, and as such I'm not going to support that model.
It seems clear, though, that the status quo is unsustainable. If I had to guess, I'd say that the next couple of years are going to gut the middle of the road news sources. Some are going to go to a premium walled-garden model, but most that try it are going to fail. The rest of the sources will cut quality and quantity. User-run and -generated sites will be largely immune to this shakeup.
What I find most interesting, though, is the possibility of news following the music industry - a dearth of well-written, researched news would surely spawn illicit article exchanges, with users filling in the gaps. The attempts of the RIAA to prevent digital exchange of music actually ended up creating the most sophisticated, democratic and censor-proof music (information) distribution networks in history. An artist can create a song in their living room using a couple hundred dollars worth of equipment, and this huge, anonymous, scalable volunteer network will ensure that it is cataloged and then mirrored and distributed across the globe. The idea of the Pirate work ethic getting applied to the news is fascinating, to me, and I find it hard to believe that the downfall of the network of self-congratulating vapid stooges that is the news industry could have anything but good effects for the country.
Difficult to compete with "free"
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
The pay wall will slash their number of readers to a small fraction of what they have now, but I assume that readership numbers are not their sole criterion for success. The NYT has a reputation for quality irrespective of mass market consumption, and there will be many people who value this quality enough to pay a premium.
While "the news" in a general sense may already be hopelessly commoditized, the NYT offers a degree of quality that you simply will not find from AP reprints. This is a prestige brand, and it doesn't need the mass market to succeed.
. . . in the life of the New York Times. What remains to be seen now is whether the chapter after that will be Chapter 7 or Chapter 11.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
As far as I know you need to give all your content to AP to be able to use the AP wire feed. Doesn't this mean that content from NYT will show up as wire feed on the sites of all other AP members? And if so, doesn't this mean that they pretty much have to withdraw from AP to keep their content to themselves?
On the subject of New Scientist, you can't even get their free stories any more. There's now a 3-page-a-month limit on all the content on the site, after which you're politely told to bugger off by the page, or register a free account for continued access. NS' free content just isn't of a standard that justifies that effort.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The NY Times is shooting itself in the foot, big time. Readership == advertising revenues. Charging to read == less readership (they will lose me for sure) == less advertising revenues == lower profits == bigger losses == no more NYT.
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
Thanks.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
about business.
If it goes live in 2011, they have already begum working on int, and won't be using the rest of 2010 to look at how others are doing it.
Shit takes time.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That's the thing, companies need to work within the market realities. There are niche's everywhere but my opinion is that the NYT does not fall into many of them in comparison to existing offerings. If they are really running themselves into the red as they say then as you say they should cut back or restructure. Or do something else. But making people pay while there exists free alternatives is just plain dumb. Perhaps some day there will be no alternatives for institutional news, but you know what would scare the crap out of them: so what, I'll take decentralized news that is marked up through multiple filters of people for free and bookmark the citizen hub sources I find useful in particular. Newspapers are just another industry the Internet is washing over, they think they're owed an existence?
Shh.
Washington Post to become most read online news source in early 2011!
Why not create a NYTimes cable news channel with the website for free.
It works for Fox
Government propoganda should be free.
Normally, I'm as cranky an information-should-be-free idealogue as slashdot's best. But the NYT is just different. I started reading it when it came to the web, but I've become a hapless addict. Three reasons in ascending order of importance:
1) The journalism is top-notch. These days that's not saying as much, but they have a number of Pulitzer-winners and just supporting people like Charlie Savage (formerly Boston Globe) and Jane Meyer ("The Dark Side") gives my wallet warm fuzzies right there.
2) Very good op-ed contributors, columnists and editorials. From a wide spectrum, for all its rep as a liberal rag. If you're somebody really important with a message (today, David Stockman on taxing banks; yesterday, Bush & Clinton on Haiti) you flog it to the Times.
3) Astoundingly good reader comments. I'm not sure if this is the community or ruthless editing, but the result is like slashdot surfed at "5": first-person contributions from people with decades of experience in the subject; reasoned, informed debates from both sides with very few capitals, exclamation marks or blowhard rhetoric. If you sort by number of reader recommendations and just read the first few dozen, the commentary is often more informative than the article.
Bottom line: bring it on. Charge me a hundred a year. Or more. It's worth it. Good food takes time, and good journalism takes money. I'm happy to support it. I get more entertainment hours out of the NYT every year than any two $60 video games, or ten $12 movies.
I only wish I could say this of even a second newspaper. The reader comments in even the august Washington Post are routinely yahoos shouting insults at each other. And in my own local Calgary Herald, the reader comments are seldom anything else.
buh bye.
I read probably 5-10 articles per day on the NYT website. While there are alternatives for free online news, none match the quality. I don't know if that makes me a power reader or not. I do know it would be a little painful to not have access to at least 2-3 articles per day.
For the 5-10 articles I'd be willing to pay something, but probably $10 per year, not per month. If they are intent on getting it "really, really right" then they need to start with the price. $49.95 / month, as the failed TimesSelect charged, is a non-starter.
The NYT announced today that they are planning on declaring bankruptcy in 2012.
Gearloos Confirms he Will Start Using CNN For Online News In 2011
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
Doh!
Hey, I sound like Rush Limbaugh already! :)
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
The Op-Ed writers were upset about the pay wall last time. So I imagine they will be part of the "free' sections.
and it will doubtless use the rest of 2010 to look at how sites like the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times fare before deciding on specifics
The WSJ online has more than 1 million paying subscribers.
It is arguably the oldest anf most successful example of pay-for-news-content on the Internet. WSJ Online Expanded Pay Plans Include Bundles, Micropayments
Junior J. Junior III announced today that he intends to stop reading content from the New York Times in 2011.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
. Advertisements have only been an attempt to carry the newspaper model (low or free in price, high advert content ) over to the Internet. There is a massive industry built around this -- this selling back and forth of impressions and click-throughs that add absolutely no value for anybody except the middle man .
Even the whole debacle about data privacy is an extension of this. People will pay tons of money to know what you do -- so that they can advertise to you in a way that makes you more likely to purchase.
Personally, I much prefer a company with a solid business plan - selling a product that has value (original, well-written content) in exchange for actual money. Not in exchange for a chance that I might give my attention, money or information to a third party brokered via a fourth party and provided through the first party's content delivery mechanism.
I think as time goes on, more and more people will be willing to pay a reasonable price in order to escape the massive caterwauling cacophony that comprises most of the free web.
... that people stopped reading the NYT online.
--- What?
I think people are forgetting why this course of action is being taken : less and less people want to read the NYT and less and less companies want to advertise on the NYT.
We keep hearing that it is such a travesty and sad state that an established and respected news outlet could go down this path to potential shutdown. The NYT is doing this because less people are reading a newspaper that injects their opinion and doesn't carry important stories that go against their established views. Climate-gate? Wasn't initially carried. Obama's Czars' political and economic affiliations? Not covered. Add to that any critical moderate NEWS of the current administration is not covered in detail.
UCLA Study of Media Bias : http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/Media-Bias-Is-Real-Finds-UCLA-6664.aspx
"Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS' "Evening News," The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal."
The vast majority of people are *not* liberal. The NYT put their money in the wrong stock, and are now paying for it. Just wait for the "Newspaper Bailout" articles to start appearing.
Yeah, fuggit, I'll pay for a NY Times subscription. I live in the city, I read the site daily. I understand that they have to pay their reporters and photographers and editors and whatnot.
BUT THERE BETTER BE NO ADS.
I mean it. I think they need to make a choice between ad-supported and subscriber-supported. For two reasons:
1) Fire the ad management machinery and you get rid of a LOT of overhead that doesn't have anything to do with your core business, which is creating great news and content that people will willing to subscribe to.
2) Stop depending on advertising and you remove all kinds of messy editorial conflicts. You no longer have pressure from advertisers to soften or pull a story that is critical of them or their industry, you don't have ads competing with content on the page, and we don't have ads sucking cpu cycles on our readers.
I don't think we have a prayer in this regard, but they really could change the face and motives of journalism in America by switching to a subscriber-supported model.
This makes the critical mistake of seeing "printed news stories" as the primary product of a newspaper. They are, historically, not. The primary product on which newspapers make money is selling readers eyeballs to advertisers. Charging readers for the dead-tree edition of the paper usually doesn't even pay for the cost of printing it, much less actually producing the content -- it is done almost entirely because advertisers see "paid circulation" numbers as a better indicator of people who are likely to actually read the paper (and be exposed to ads) than any estimates of distribution of free papers, which lets papers that charge reader also more for ad space than free papers can.
Online, there are much more precise measures of exposure to (and utility of) ads than paid circulation, so the primary reason newspapers charge for dead-tree editions doesn't exist.
OTOH, the existing newspaper business models are generally failing for the pay dailies, and some of them are trying to focus their business more on serving readers as their primary customers than serving advertisers; the degree to which this succeeds will depend on whether they do enough to bring in revenue from readers to offset the money lost to advertisers. Simply charging for content online alone isn't going to do that, its just going to hasten the collapse of online readership.
Charging more regardless of medium -- online or print -- reducing the volume of advertising, and improving content by doing more original reporting and less relaying of wire service stories that are relayed through many other online, broadcast, and print outlets, and doing more investigative reporting might work to make newspapers profitable, though it'll mean a much smaller readership. And if you narrow the audience that much, you probably don't hurt yourself by ditching the whole expensive print infrastructure altogether and going online only. The kind of people that are going to pay enough to be the primary support of the news business rather than advertisers doing that are pretty plugged-in as a group.
As noted, several print outlets have already done this -- the NY Times is following, not leading -- and most of those that have are still desperately seeking ways to keep afloat.
Honestly, I think one of the big obstacles the newspapers need to overcome with the "move to digital media" is the established "norm" that on the web, your content should be free (or ad banner supported, at least).
The media corps. always give me the impression that they're screaming and hollering that "Internet users don't value their content", when instead, maybe it's THE MEDIA CORPS. who need to realize they're trying to encroach on a specific type of media that existed long before they arrived, in a "free to all takers" format, by default!
The Internet started out with content posted by educational institutions, libraries and research labs, along with free contributions on Usenet and the like by anyone who wished to contribute it. Commercial business didn't even TOUCH the thing until decades later.
And when most of us think of what commercial business has "contributed" to the Internet since then? We think of spam emails, spyware trying to monitor the sites we visit, and useless "rich media" web sites that take forever to download, only to offer non-searchable text delivered as graphics content, and typically little real "substance" on the site anyway.
It's not so much that we reject the notion that you have content worth paying something for.... It's more the idea that you need to serve it up to us in the correct "setting". The Internet is probably best used as a place to offer *some* free content, so people can easily see what you've got to offer and become "hooked" on going to you for articles. But I think the advent of e-readers (a la the Kindle, or Apple's upcoming tablet) might be where they need to shift their focus for paid subscription content. These devices function more like their "dead tree" equivalents. They're very portable and focus on reading content as a primary point of the device. People buying them don't generally have expectations or preconceptions that all the content on them should be free, either.
Right... if they're still around in 2011.
Well I for one would be willing to pay $10-20/month to read the NYT online. I already spend probably an hour a day reading it, and fifteen years ago I'd be paying for daily newspaper delivery at my age anyhow. Good journalism deserves my money.
Most people go into a movie theater and pay $5 for a tube of popcorn that is worth 50 cents but balk at paying a dime for a product that many gladly paid for before the internet.
The fact is just about none of the creators of the news content are making money online so when people suggest going to another similar free site, guess what that site is not profitable either. I think the only logical outcomes are some sort of pay system or a system that consolidates to the point that all of our news comes from one or two sources which would not be a good thing for a democratic society.
Maybe there's a secondary market that the NYT can get into. Seems to me there doesn't exist any painless way for people to make micropayments for online content. The NYT could be a pioneer in this market and provide a way for other papers to integrate a micropayment system into their online publications. Something similar to a "One-click" shopping.
From the article-
"Starting in early 2011, visitors to NYTimes.com will get a certain number of articles free every month before being asked to pay a flat fee for unlimited access. Subscribers to the newspaper’s print edition will receive full access to the site without extra charge"
So, with a little work, I should be able to....
1. Reverse engineer the algorithm used
2. Set up a proxy website to defeat the algorithm
3. Charge 1/2 the price the Times is charging to visit my proxy.
4. Profit!
Thank you NY Times!
So this means that likely just the bloggers will subscribe, have something to write about, summarize the content and distro to the people that read the blogs. I guess that means NYT makes some money off of it, but it forces them into less relevance in the online world.
Why do you think they call it a Kindle?
As far as I understand it, the real issue is that the newspapers think they're losing money because consumers are getting the product for free, and consumers are saying that the newspapers are losing money because there is no longer an overriding need for the product, in some cases going so far as to say that questionable journalism makes the product no more than a cheering section for a particular set of issues or for a particular political party.
If the former is true, then a subscription model could work if done properly. If the latter is true, web subscriptions will not help and barring government intervention, the paper will sink. It'll be entertaining either way.
If the NYT really wanted to enter the internet age, they'd dump their presses and distribution network and go internet only. In the rare cases when the user still wanted a physical paper, they could most probably be generated locally by dedicated E size printers at lower cost than being trucked in from a remote press. Or they'd pioneer electronic paper and make it work. Or e-book readers. Or all of the above.
I think there's several reasons why newspapers can not do this. One (the primary I think) is that there is a huge inertia in print media that hasn't played out yet. It's difficult for management of traditional newspapers to get their heads around a print-free business model, and many would (apparently) go under rather than go there. They typically see this internet thing as an irritation that unfairly competes with their core business, and that news websites will only ever be, at best, a companion to the print version. This clearly doesn't match reality and said papers deserve to go out of business.
Another reason is unions. You don't just dump unionized printers and truck drivers en-masse and stay in business. I see this as an insurmountable obstacle and the main reason why the newspapers will either fold or get nationalized. There doesn't seem to be a third choice.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Peter: Have the NYT buy Craig's List
Seriously.
The problem with your online advertising supported model is that most of the advertising is not regionally relevant, and so does not generate income for your advertisers proportional to your readership. Regionalizing your advertising would fix this, and prevent you "needing" to throw up a pay wall.
Micro payments aren't going to save you because no one but the connection-based telephone companies has really got the transaction cost down to under the micropayment cost, and they only do it by amortizing the costs of processing over a number of transactions, and then doing transaction accounting. This is either done by pre-pay and good accounting on the back end (I can't see someone signing up for a micropayment service plan the way they do for a cell phone service plan), or by good accounting on the back end and post-billing (e.g. like the sub-$0.10 charges per minute for long distance land line calls).
This is why there are so many small markets like iTunes, or Verizon's bill-me-for-taking-my-phone-out-of-my-pocket services, or other cellular ring tones in the $0.99 range: to get the costs down proportionally.
If you throw up a pay wall, you are simply going to marginalize the NYT out of existence (worst case) or into regionally bound world irrelevance (best case). There are other people who provide wire service aggregation, and frankly your non-wire, non-regional content at the NYT is such a small fraction of the overall content that you're not going to be able to get by on selling into anything but a regional market that cares about the ads and non-wire content enough to pay. I can get my AP and UPI anywhere, and maybe your problem there is trying to support their own outdated model (which should convert to pay-more-for-earlier-access).
Personally, I value your journalists writing unique content, and I value your editors and their editorial standards and decisions. But I have to say, I very much do NOT value the rest of your infrastructure that you keep around to no benefit to me. That includes your presses, your large buildings, and other things which act only as anchors to tie you to the brick-and-mortar world like the Albatross around the neck of the Ancient Mariner. I have no idea why you need an office other than your laptop, or an editorial meeting room to pitch ideas in other than iChat or some other video chat tool.
-- Terry
Didn't the NYT do this before in the beginning when they went to the web?
I ignored them.
If they start charging I'll stop reading.
There are too many free sources of information.
Publishing costs an order of magnitude than it did as print media.
I know. I was a publisher, editor, writer, etc.
They need to figure out the ad model again.
Why is it that so many people can't get past the skim milk reflex long enough to arrive at the aged cheddar nirvana? I used to subscribe to the Economist precisely *because* they had to age the news longer than 90s.
It strikes me that many people attend the news more to not feel left out than to gain insight or comprehension. It all people want is to feel included, quality is going to be a tough sell.
Question: Will NYT go to full paid subscriptions for online content?
Answer: iTablet (yes).
Actually, I think the real rule is that stupidity is trying the same thing you did before in the same circumstances and expecting different results. But the circumstances are not the same, as you indicate. Now it's true the outcome may not be different, but it's not true that it's obvious that the outcome will not be different.
What's ironic and sad about the fact that you cite the recession is that one reason there's a recession is a lack of jobs. And the lack of jobs is created by a lack of money to hire people, including at the New York Times. They are not wanting to charge because they want to stick it to you, they want to survive and to keep people employed.
So if you think the recession matters--and you must, since you cited it as relevant here--then you should buy a subscription. And tell your friends to. And soon if everyone does, it may be seen as a valid business model.
Imagine that--paying for content. I know it sounds quaint, but think of the implications: The actual producers of content would be benefiting for the content they actually produced. Why on Earth would you be smugly suggesting it was somehow better for people to be feebly rewarded by advertising dollars, which (a) doesn't reward the content producers really, (b) does reward the advertisers when they didn't do anything except pay feeble amounts that don't buy a cup of coffee for most content producers, and (c) drags the entire industry off in search of content that advertisers like instead of in search of content that end-users want.
Forget the pay scheme. I, the end user, want to read stuff because it's good to read, not because someone can find a way to make a buck on accessories for it. I don't want people preferring to write about the planet Saturn rather than the planet Jupiter because there's a car named Saturn that might put up its ads next to remarks about the planet Saturn. I want people to write good stuff about any topic they want and then to get paid in proportion to their goodness. Like used to happen. Quaint? I think not. More like lost rationality.
Yes, it might not work. But like getting a decent health care system, I'd rather see them fail trying than give up because it's a lost cause. Don't be defeatist, be encouraging.
One final point: These are people among the most trusted in the world to report on politics. If they fold because you insist they have old-fashioned ways and should yield to the "advertising" model of free content, the problem is that we may soon find that advertisers are trying to sway them away from things that good reporters need to cover. What then? The news industry suffered a serious blow in the late 60's or maybe early 70's, don't quite recall, when news went commercial and had to show a profit. That's a tough thing. But at least let them show a profit on their actual news, don't make them have to contort news content to be profitable on some other basis. If not for them, do it for us: the citizens. When things go wrong (oops, they have: economy, health, climate change, wars, torture, ...) it may turn out to matter.
And news is not just any industry. I'm actually not sure most industries are served by lack of variety, but certainly the news industry is not. So your admonition that a leading free-thinker in news should "consolidate" seems ... well, short-sighted.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
funny how you don't see such problems in China