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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.
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.
It's not a matter of being the most reliable; it's a reliable, content-generating, influential news source.
A very small percentage of our summaries link to the NYTimes. Regardless, we're always disappointed when a site we occasionally link turns into a pay site. Some stories we can pick up elsewhere, some we can't.
The bigger problem is that it's one less source -- not just a link target, but a source -- that provides tech news. And other sites are assuredly watching and taking cues from the NYT, the WSJ, etc., to see how they can either turn a profit or turn a bigger profit. A drop in the bucket, perhaps, but enough drops will fill the bucket. As more and more sites put up paywalls, news junkies will have less free news to read.
On the other hand, nobody reads the linked articles anyway, so maybe it's not so bad!