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Who Will Control the Cost of the NYT On Digital Readers?
RobotRunAmok writes "Ryan Tate, at Gawker, describes the 'heated turf war' waging at the New York Times. The print and digital divisions have differing views over how much a subscription to the Gray Lady (iPad edition) should cost. The print troops believe $20-$30 monthly is the proper price point (fearing that setting the mark any lower will jeopardize print distribution), while the digital soldiers are digging in their heels at $10 a month. The Kindle version is already managed by the Print Army, so don't count on logic necessarily driving any decisions here. It's complicated: the Web version of the paper is still free through 2011, and the computer 'Times Reader' has already been released and priced at $14.95 monthly."
I think the real question should be, how much should a paid subscription cost?
As a long time subscriber to online.wsj.com, the online version of the Wall Street Journal, I have watched my online subscription cost float up from around $75 promotional price to $155 on the latest bill. (I have a query in to customer support to find out why they were advertising a combined print + online deal for only $135 a month or two ago, yet they're sticking it to me.) Thus far, I have tolerated this annual fee in exchange for excellent content.
Once an online subscription exceeds about $25/year, you would expect it to have some substantial and unique value that compels you to pay. The WSJ has a tremendous volume of financial and business content, plus provocative commentary, active talk-backs, and broad news coverage. I can't get through it in a day, certainly not in 30 minutes over coffee at 7am, and tend to cherry-pick the interesting titles during little breaks throughout the day (and, now, on the bus/bathroom/in bed using a Nexus One android phone).
Unlike the WSJ, which is truly a national/international content provider, the NY Times has a regional quality to it that reflects its liberal, middle-to-upper class urban New York readership. Furthermore, all of the national and international news can be obtained from AP, Reuters, and BBC websites for free. Will someone in Boston, Toronto, Fresno, or Omaha feel as compelled to spend $25/month (i.e., $300/year) for such content?
My recommendation to the New York Times is to keep the price low initially, then start to add premium features (more video, interactive stuff, discounted 3rd party deals, etc.) for subscribers only and try to build up your paid online readership. If you start out by gouging people who are used to a free NY Times online, most of them will simply jump ship to one of the dozens of other, free news services available. Hubris will get you nowhere.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Does it really matter? The price doesn't change the fact that the NYT's journalism is basically shit most of the time, even though they are one of the most "respect" papers in the US.
Their coverage of the run-up to the Iraqi War was abysmal, for instance. It was pretty clear then that they should have done their journalistic duty and printed much more about how those pushing for war were just plain wrong. And now we know that they basically just repeated the lies and bullshit spewed by various Republican and Democrat politicians during that time period.
It's not a "Democrats vs. Republicans" or "left vs. right" situation, either. They should be tearing Obama and the Democrats several new assholes for their handling of Wall Street, Afghanistan and other issues. But for whatever reason, they don't, or if they try to it's quite feebly done.
The NYT, were it actually concerned with journalism, would themselves be ripping into Wall Street and corporate America. But then again, I suppose they can't, because they seem more concerned with advertising revenue over realistic and quality reporting.
Regardless of what they charge, I'm not going to pay any money for their content when they don't ask the hard-hitting questions of politicians and corporations, and do the real investigative journalism that's worthy of money.
Whether the digital edition affects sales of the print edition is beside the point. Online news is going to affect the sales of the print edition anyway. the question is whether the NYT wants a segment of that or not.
Digital media is distruptive technology. If the NYT doesn't clobber their print sales someone else is going to do the job for them.
The consumer will. The consumer ultimately determines the value of any item sold.
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Dear reader, consider
The New York Times has chosen to cling to the conventional business model as long as possible. But there is a better way: recognize that newspapers are something special, and have worth in society as more than just another business. Endow them and let them self-finance.
the "lyfestyle" and other sections I really dont care about so they have a zero value to me
This bundling is a problem in other places as well... I am this close (fingers 3mm apart) to canceling ALL of my cable TV, because the prices keeps going up - the reason "channels such as CNN and ESPN are raising their rates."
Fine, can I get a package with Discovery, History, and a few others, WITHOUT CNN and ESPN? no.
Broadcasters are starting to have many of the same issues The Press is having.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Are they nuts? I honestly doubt whether I'll renew my local paper (The Denver Post) next year. I'm paying about $35/year for a Thursday-Sunday subscription, and even that seems like too much. The news is outdated and I've read it all online by the time the paper is delivered. The only thing I'm really still getting it for is local advertisements and coupons. The NY Times has none of those things, and I can read the same AP/Reuters articles anywhere. I could care less about their editorials and investigative stuff. If it is really important, it will show up all over the web in short order.
Necron69
I had a Kindle subscription to the NYT, but canceled it recently because it didn't have a lot of the cool stuff - like the puzzle. I couldn't see the point to paying for a neutered product.
Newspaper corporations are expert at missing the boat on media changes. Newspapers could easily have gone into radio when it became a mass medium in the 1920s-1930s. Either running an entire station that just read the paper over the air, maybe with extra features inserted, in between the ads, or just syndicating readings to other stations. They could have done the same when TV came around. Both times they let their hugely popular, powerful and profitable industry get knocked down by newcomers in the new medium. By the time the Internet arrived in prime time, they were already pros at missing the boat, and this time missed the perfect medium for them to dominate.
Now they'll screw up mobile readers, because they are locked in a late 1800s mentality. They hate interactivity, customization by readers, sharing, or anything else that's different from being the voice of a central authority on facts increasingly out of touch with the reality they say they cover.
The only new medium newspapers ever tried to adopt was movies, with newsreels. A terrible way to present anything but the most sensationalistic and trivial news, but an effective propaganda tool. That is what the newspaper industry reduces itself to by treating its consumers with contempt, instead of embracing opportunities to communicate more effectively: a manipulative entertainment tool.
No wonder nobody even wraps fish with them anymore.
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make install -not war