Not long before the Times ultimately pulled the plug on TimesSelect, Friedman wrote [publisher Arthur] Sulzberger a long memo explaining that, while he was intially supportive of TimesSelect, he’d been alarmed that he had lost most of his readers in India and China and the Middle East.Rather than simply erect a a pay wall such as the Wall Street Journal enforces, the Times will apparently go with a metered system similar to what some newspapers use, where readers can sample a certain number of free articles before being asked to subscribe. The payment method the Times has chosen is apparently not the much-ballyhooed new micropayment platform Journalism Online, nor is it Google. Instead, according to New York, look for the Times to partner with Apple, which plans to launch its new tablet computer later this month. According to the magazine, "sources speculate that Sulzberger will strike a content partnership for the new device, which could dovetail with the paid strategy."
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
New York Times to charge
The New York Times has made the decision to charge for online content, according to New York magazine. This comes after "a year of sometimes fraught debate" inside the paper, according to the magazine. On the one hand, revenues at the venerable daily continue to deteriorate, as they are at every other media outlet these days because of the economy. On the other hand, expecting online readers to pay for what has been free until now is bound to drop readership. A good measure of that is the ego-hit the newspaper's columnists are bound to take. According to New York, star writers like Tom Friedman and Maureen Dowd "grew frustrated at their dramatic fall-off in online readership" the last time the Times experimented with putting their columns behind a pay wall in an ill-fated experiment known as TimesSelect.
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A very difficult issue. This is one time I'm glad I'm not the one in charge.
ReplyDeleteCharging people for content they have always gotten for free is bound to upset readers.
However, the news is a paper's actual product, it is what it is actually selling. The medium of ink on paper is just that, a chosen medium. So why would any company give their product away for free and expect to be sucessful?
Hmmmmm.. Has it come to this..? Well.. I don't have a problem with it. I find journalism to be costly. It cost to send Reporters to travel and report, it cost journalist to do their research and write a segments. To have detailed accurate stories it all cost money. Money must be traded for Research and resources and when it comes down to it, the distributer needs profits to thrive.
ReplyDeleteI truly think people who are not subscribed to the magazine or the/a newspaper already, will pay for a subscription online.
People do depend on television for most of their news, however people in America are also impatient and do want to skip through all the mumbo-jumbo to read what it is that they want to read, or what they find news worthy.
In plain, America has become accustomed to that little click of a button. And those who realize the quality difference of information between Wikipedia and the Times will subscribe online. They may not be fond of the idea, but they will summit to the dues.