CNet News
The New York Times is reportedly getting ready to charge readers for access to the venerable newspaper’s online content.
The newspaper is expected to announce in coming weeks that it will institute a metered pay plan in which readers would have access to a limited number of free articles before being invited to subscribe, according to a report in New York magazine that cited sources close to the newsroom.
The report also suggests that a content deal could be in the works for Apple’s long-rumored tablet, which many expect to be unveiled on January 27. Apple has reportedly been shopping its device to media companies in Australia to gauge interest in having their products available on the device when it’s released.
I guarantee you they wont be getting a dime from me.
Hopefully tablets and ereaders will help the newsprint industry back on their feet. I will definitely pay for quality reporting in the form of tablets.
Reading magazines on my computer screen , like Zinio, just didn’t do it for me. Like to read laying on the couch, bed or sitting on the throne. That’s how god wanted news to be read.
Too bad newspapers are so concerned with charging for their content rather than making their content worth paying for…
#2 why do you hope for the newspaper industry to make a comeback and continue NOT telling us important news, skewing the stuff they do tell us, and leaving ALL of their journalism to the likes of Reuters and the AP?
#3 hit the nail on the head so hard it exploded.
#3, ftw
#4 Why? Once you figure out the difference between journalism and news, you will know.
Don’t let the creeps at Fox News snooker you into thinking they do journalism.
They create “news” and then put together a story around it. Blah, rather see a movie.
Let’s see conservatives are stupid. Yet liberals are now going to pay for their daily indoctrination.
We are slowly becoming the paperless society that I first heard of in the 1980’s.
Toilet paper will be the last to go.
They have it backwards. Don’t sell the content to readers, sell the readers to advertisers. Here is how I see the future of content:
There will be a few big news providers, with the access and reportage that you expect from big news (yes, that bad LOL). They will publish their articles, and each should have advertising. The thing that will make their content republishable is that these organization will be the offspring of AP, NBC, CNN, etc, who have a good head start.
Then, instead of them publishing a newspaper or even their own site, ventures like Huffington Post, Drudge and Fox Nation will become the norm. Each site will link to the news stories, then provide commentary for their audience (for the left, right, center and off-center), who will make money from ads on their site.
For the NYT, they will shortly find out that there is plenty of alternate sources for news, that their product will not be important enough for the public to buy it.
@#10 “Don’t sell the content to readers, sell the readers to advertisers.” – that too is outdated (Facebook Beacon anyone?). People do not want to pay for information on “information highway” they are paying for. Nor they like to be sold or traded, be it symbolically. What is needed is completely new system of income production. Likely from bottom-up (reporter/journalist is paid) and the content drifts upward through various free exchanges (as the ISP’s share the pipes now) to the user. Organizations who’ll pay for reports need to have completely new profit model (ads will be just small fraction of it). That is what someone needs to invent… But, I’ll guarantee that anyone attempting to sell their users profiles/info/contact/exposure as a main source of income will be hit hard by reality that people hate such prospect.
If NY Times (or Chicago Trib, the Albuquerque Journal, Times Picayune, or whatever) sends the news electronically, will we be able to read our news on our choice of reader? I’m thinking of choice among laptops, PCs, Macs, generic tablets, Kindle, whatever…Pay a monthly fee for a pass, and download to whatever you want to read your news on. What I don’t want is to lug around a different reader for each news source.
There might be news worth paying for but NYT ain’t it. #2 has one thing right though. God meant news to be read on the throne . 😉 Works on my Droid.
Good luck getting any non-ad money out of casual web usage.
I haven’t been to their web site in a year or more. Good luck to them.
Since I get the Time Sunday paper (for the NYT & Style magazines & Book Review in hardcopy), I surmise I won’t see a new charge every month. Times Reader launches when I boot both my PC’s and Mac’s and you can’t get that unless you subscribe in some fashion.
The time for paying for news is past, they’ll never bring it back to life using a pay for access business model. It’s better this way. I remember when you took the news they gave you. Now more than ever before, you can choose, better than that, you can participate. If you’re reading this blog, then I imagine you’re aware of the change. If they can’t adapt to the change they have no one to blame but themselves.
They will not pry one red cent from my cold dead fingers.
The NYT is far too political for me. Even the front page should be labeled as opinion.But, at some point we have to pay for the gathering and delivery of the news. I see a different kind of subscription coming down the lane. Sort of like them music services, as long as you pay your $15 a month, you can continue to access a group of sources. Then the provider (Google?) will make micropayments to each source according to how many times they are accessed. If you are attractive to the readers, you make more money. Of course, this makes it likely that new will tend more towards entertainment but, it’s most of the way there now.
congrats new york times, now your website will be as irrelevant as your newspaper
They tried this with the Globe already, and they changed their mind. Then they tried TimesSelect and abandoned that.
At least they can collect some money from all the radio and TV news guys that copy them.
The problem I see here is that the NYT thinks they are the WSJ. However, what they are ignoring is that most WSJ readers are business people who actually make money. The WSJ is a source of business information first and foremost. Most of the NYT readers are liberals that like to sit around the campfire, sing kumbayah and collect welfare checks. They are likely to laud the survival of their rag while finding ways to read it for free.
What could go wrong?
Oh wait … when I read the NY Times it is generally that I saw something trivially interesting … just one of the many things I could be doing.
If they make it pay only, I’d just move on like any other password protected site.
I have other things I could be doing and I don’t have a “NEED” for the NY Times.
I still am not sure why these news papers feel their stories are worth a dime on the internet while others provide the same story for free?
I also think if your going to sell content like this news papers should sell it like a news stand and allow single copy or daily purchase of their content. They seem to want to charge a subscription which is almost as much as home delivery of their news paper? How can you possible justify a electronic delivery costing as much?
#23- the difference is the WSJ online subscribers write it off as a business expense. Take away that deduction and the WSJ subscriber rate would be no different.
52 bobbo. Easy. Then the speaker immediately stops speaking, if for no other reason than loss of train of thought. Supporters chime in to reach your magic length of interruption. End of proceedings. Keep thinking this thing through.
Seriously, what’s the point of free speech if it can’t be exercised? Imagine what this blog would look like if your “rule” could somehow be in effect:
“One of them: if you think fetuses WHAT? FETUSES? WTF YOU TAKING ABOUT NOW!? are really human beings, YOU SHOULD’VE BEEN ABORTED, MF!!then killing their mothers, doctors, and political allies MURDERER!!WHAT KIND OF NON SEQUITUER BS ARE YOU RUNNING NOW??is THE ONLY MORAL COURSE. OH, YEAH. LIKE YOU KNOW MORAL, MF!!Of course, very few would do that, I’M COMING DOWN NOW TO KICK YOUR ASS!! Hey, no, leave my bro alone. Now I’m gonna kick your ass!! hence the fallacy of their position is revealed.”
RBG
Didn’t they try this and fail already 3 or 4 years ago?
The faster the NYTimes, with its slanted news, is not read by anyone, the better off America will be.
I think $1/view is about the right pricing.
#26
Business people that subscribe to the NYT are also open to claiming it as a business expense. Of course, that requires having enough business people interested in the NYT to want a subscription.
# 23 Thomas:
“Most of the NYT readers are liberals that like to sit around the campfire, sing kumbayah and collect welfare checks.”
I doubt many welfare recipients buy the New York Times.
I’d pay a quarter to read the Tuesday Science section. If I lived in New York, I would probably subscribe.