Support NeoGAF

[entremet]

The New York Times is preparing to introduce multiple subscription packages for access to the paper's website and other digital content, kicking off the biggest test to date of consumers' willingness to pay for news they're accustomed to getting free.

Under the new system, expected to be rolled out next month, the Times will sell an Internet-only subscription for unlimited access to the Times site, as well as a broader digital package that bundles the Times online with its application on the iPad, according to a person familiar with the matter. Subscribers to the print edition of the paper will get full online privileges at no additional cost, Times executives have said.

The person familiar with the matter said the Times has considered charging around $20 a month for the digital bundle and less than half that for the Web-only offering. To read the Times on Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle e-reader device currently costs $20 per month. The Times has guarded details on pricing, which have evolved during the planning of the system and which could change even after rollout, depending on demand and other factors.

Online readers would get free access to a certain number of pages on the website each month before they are prompted to sign up for a subscription for additional material, an approach currently used by the Financial Times, which is published by Pearson PLC.

Executives from New York Times Co. settled on that model over a year ago after they decided it was the best way to tackle the dilemma facing many news organizations: How to balance the need to make up for lost print readership and ad revenue with the risk of taking themselves out of an Internet ecosystem where so much similar material is free. The company declined to comment.

As a free site, the Times online attracts more than 30 million monthly unique visitors, according to comScore Inc. Those visitors fuel over $100 million a year in advertising on the website, according to people familiar with the matter.
Times Co. executives have said that only about 15% of the paper's online readers are "heavy users," meaning the vast majority probably won't trigger a payment requirement.

And half or more of the site's traffic in some months comes through the "side door," or from search engines, social-networking sites and other sources.

Times Co. executives say people who arrive through search engines like Google won't be blocked from viewing the first page of a search result regardless of how many visits they've made. The openness of the system has raised questions inside and outside the Times about whether the paper is making it too easy to avoid paying. Executives have said they will work with search engines to limit the frequency of such visits so readers can't game the system.

The approach "will help to preserve NYTimes.com's significant reach and advertising inventory, in that it will allow us to retain light users while aiming to convert heavier users to a digital subscription," Times Co. Chief Executive Janet Robinson said at an investor conference in December.

While some publications, including The Wall Street Journal, have had online subscription
services for years, the industry as a whole has waded gingerly into paid content. The Dallas Morning News, owned by A.H. Belo Corp., next month will begin charging $16.95 for full access to its website plus various apps and other digital content. A print subscription will include access to content in all those places. Jim Moroney, the paper's publisher, said the primary goal is to get print subscribers more engaged with the digital editions and observe how non-subscribers respond to paying for access. He said the paper has "very little expectations around the Internet website and paying for access to it."

News Corp.'s Times of London last year began limiting access to its website to people who register for a subscription, resulting in a sharp drop in traffic. News Corp. executives said they are pleased with the initial response, with about 50,000 monthly subscribers to its digital editions signed up in the first three months.

Central to the New York Times's offering is its iPad app, which currently is free but likely will cost about $20 a month once the new pay system is introduced.

To sell subscriptions that bundle the Times in print, online and on mobile devices, the Times has had to develop an e-commerce platform that patches together various old and new databases and programs. Executives have cited the difficulty of that task as a key reason for the long lead-up to the new pay system and have been testing and debugging the system.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704213404576100033883758352.html#ixzz1BuH90tgw

 

[balladofwindfishes]

People will just get their news from somewhere else, or just wait for some blog to paraphrase it.

Pay to read models aren't going to work in the current open Internet model.

 

[kkaabboomm]

i wonder if the 'google loophole' will exist ala WSJ?

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-read-the-wsj-for-free-online-2009-6

(note: not sure if the loophole still works for WSJ, I've had a subscription for a while now and havent had to try it...)

 

[lordfroakie]

RIP NYT

 

[Vanillalite]

How are they gonna know if you have visited or not?

 

[Jenga]

People will just get their news from somewhere else, or just wait for some blog to paraphrase it.

Pay to read models aren't going to work in the current open Internet model.

basically


I'd like to read NYT but I don't want to pay a sub fee for a news service on the internet

 

[The Technomancer]

basically


I'd like to read NYT but I don't want to pay a sub fee for a news service on the internet

Problem is we're going to have to eventually. No-one works for free, and "advertising" isn't a magical well of continual money.

 

[speedpop]

People will just get their news from somewhere else, or just wait for some blog to paraphrase it.

Pay to read models aren't going to work in the current open Internet model.

I remember Murdoch spouting years ago about it and saying that News Ltd would push forward with it. To this date the biggest news website in Australia operated by News Ltd is still free - complete with exaggerated headlines.

Problem is we're going to have to eventually. No-one works for free, and "advertising" isn't a magical well of continual money.

If it was something like $5 per month then I can completely understand it, especially for a publication that has a respectable reputation.

 

[numble]

Why the iPad tax?

Oh, and nobody seems to have actually read the article:

Times Co. executives have said that only about 15% of the paper's online readers are "heavy users," meaning the vast majority probably won't trigger a payment requirement.

 

[EmSeta]

I'd actually pay for quality digital content, if the price is low (considerably lower than in the newsstands) and payment is easy (iTunes store).

One of the major Swedish newspapers is trying to charge 2-3x as much for their iPad version as the paper edition. It's basically just a fucking PDF without any frills. That makes no sense whatsoever.

 

[ClosingADoor]

So you only pay after a certain amount of pageviews. And if you go through Google, the first page you visit will always be free. Hmm... curious how this will work out.

 

[jamesinclair]

People will just get their news from somewhere else, or just wait for some blog to paraphrase it.
.

People like you (and some media outlets) seem to forget that the media isn't just for reporting news events or rephrasing press releases, it's for investigative reporting. You can only get that at the source.

 

[Eteric Rice]

People like you (and some media outlets) seem to forget that the media isn't just for reporting news events or rephrasing press releases, it's for investigative reporting. You can only get that at the source.

Reporters still investigate? I thought they stopped doing that shit years ago!

 

[loosus]

Charge or don't charge. There is no in-between.

They don't need to get into this mess. You can't reliably figure out who is using your site. They need to either go all-out and charge everyone to view the site or do not charge anything at all. If they do that, at least everyone understands the game.

 

[DjangoReinhardt]

Funny, the only way I read parts of the Times is via my iPad. That's going to stop now because 1) I only access a small portion of their content and 2) their "exclusive" content that I do read isn't worth $20/month to me. I'd be willing to give them money if they'd charge me a reasonable rate based on my actual usage of their product, or at least offer restricted subscriptions for someone who doesn't want or need access to everything.

 

[Boards of Canada]

Some of you guys are f'd, just assuming that new should be acquired free and you should never have to pay for it. What a load of b.s.

 

[Jin34]

People like you (and some media outlets) seem to forget that the media isn't just for reporting news events or rephrasing press releases, it's for investigative reporting.You can only get that at the source.

So when Wikileaks sends it to them?

 

[jamesinclair]

Reporters still investigate? I thought they stopped doing that shit years ago!

Fortunately, some outlets like the NYTimes still do that. Most don't but a few still do.

Also, there are special interest articles that you can only get at the source, like this one:

Hong Kong's Forgotten Villages

HONG KONG — Sitting on a wooden bench near his small concrete house, Cheung Cheung drew his hand across the overgrown fields before him and described what they were used for.

“The villagers’ animals used to graze here,” he said. “People kept cows, chickens and pigs.”

Pointing to the waterfront not far beyond, he added, “There was fishing, too.”

That was about 50 years ago. These days, Mr. Cheung’s village, once home to about 160 people, is almost bereft of human and animal life, save for a few stray dogs and a cow that belonged to a neighbor who moved away years ago.

etc

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/19/world/asia/19villages.html?_r=2&ref=world&pagewanted=all


It's not like USA Today can take that article and sum it up in 250 words. That misses the entire point.

Articles like that are for the enjoyment of reading and learning, not "how many died?"