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New York Times Prepares Plan to Charge for Online Reading

8 points by atularora 16y ago

wybo 16y ago
I wonder if this is going to work. First of all because it is a paywall, and many people might go elsewhere. But secondly, as set out in the article, their aim seems to be a semi-transparent paywall, that will allow people to read a few articles before triggering a payment requirement. Will people buy into this?
- brudgers 16y ago
  When the NYT required logging-in using free registration, I rarely read their articles online and would not click on articles linked to them. The same was true a couple of years ago when the Washington Post briefly installed annoyware. Of course I may not be typical, but then again neither are people who subscribe to the NYT to have it on their Kindle. If the NYT stops working seemlessly with aggregators, it may be hard to replace the advertising revenue they lose with subscriptions.
- jonknee 16y ago
  FT.com uses a similar "first few are free" scheme and while I don't think they are exactly killing it, they have stuck with it and are able to make money (last I heard they have around 125,000 online subscribers). Most interesting to me is they are going to do like WSJ.com and allow unlimited access for search engine referrals. That makes it easy for savvy readers to read whatever they want, but hard to link to. That's a bad strategy to get links/attention online.
jcr 16y ago
I'm looking forward to the HN submission filter preventing nytimes.com links.
BenoitEssiambre 16y ago
The pricing is ridiculous. In the digital age, people gets news from dozens of sources not just one or two papers like it used to be. I myself am a bit of an RSS junky and each day probably read more than 300 headlines, skim through maybe 10 to 15 articles and read maybe two or three fully. Say I limited my reading to only 10 websites, at the advertised price I would be paying $2400 per year!
- corin_ 16y ago
  It's expensive, but at the same time, there'll still be plenty of people willing to pay. I currently pay for WSJ, FT, and a bunch of magazines, and NYT will join that list when the paywall arrives. (And there are at least a couple more papers I'd pay for if they required it, to allow me to read on the iPad.)
jrockway 16y ago
This is good to hear. I think content is worth paying for, and that producers should charge for their work. Yes, it makes linking and therefore promotion harder, but a lot of readers of NYT just visit the site and read a bunch of articles. Anyway, the advertising teat is going to dry up someday, and I'd like my favorite publications to stay around. If it means paying for them with actual money, it means paying for them with actual money. There is no other alternative. People have paid for ad-free books, movies, TV, and music for ages. Why not newspapers? (Incidentally, the article doesn't say whether or not the paid pages will have advertising. If they do, they can rot in hell. If it's ad-free, though, then they are on to something.)
bryanlarsen 16y ago
In the good old days of newspapers, newspapers made 80% of their income from advertising and 20% from subscriptions and individual sales. 80% of their expenses were devoted to printing, distribution and management, with 20% going to pay content creators. The biggest reason that newspapers charge for their content is just to ensure that their newspapers go to people who actually want to read it and can afford to do so. (Advertisers aren't interested in advertising to those who think a dollar is a lot of money). That's not a problem on the web -- the marginal cost is so low that there's no reason at all to limit your readership. Yes, ad rates have gone down, but I find it very hard to believe that there's not a viable business paying journalists and giving their content away, ad-supported. Another piece of evidence is the fact that those "subway papers" give away physical newspapers for free. Yes, they don't pay much for content, but their marginal costs per reader are so much higher.

8 points by atularora 16y ago

wybo 16y ago

I wonder if this is going to work. First of all because it is a paywall, and many people might go elsewhere. But secondly, as set out in the article, their aim seems to be a semi-transparent paywall, that will allow people to read a few articles before triggering a payment requirement. Will people buy into this?

brudgers 16y ago
When the NYT required logging-in using free registration, I rarely read their articles online and would not click on articles linked to them. The same was true a couple of years ago when the Washington Post briefly installed annoyware. Of course I may not be typical, but then again neither are people who subscribe to the NYT to have it on their Kindle. If the NYT stops working seemlessly with aggregators, it may be hard to replace the advertising revenue they lose with subscriptions.
jonknee 16y ago
FT.com uses a similar "first few are free" scheme and while I don't think they are exactly killing it, they have stuck with it and are able to make money (last I heard they have around 125,000 online subscribers). Most interesting to me is they are going to do like WSJ.com and allow unlimited access for search engine referrals. That makes it easy for savvy readers to read whatever they want, but hard to link to. That's a bad strategy to get links/attention online.

jcr 16y ago

I'm looking forward to the HN submission filter preventing nytimes.com links.

BenoitEssiambre 16y ago

The pricing is ridiculous. In the digital age, people gets news from dozens of sources not just one or two papers like it used to be. I myself am a bit of an RSS junky and each day probably read more than 300 headlines, skim through maybe 10 to 15 articles and read maybe two or three fully. Say I limited my reading to only 10 websites, at the advertised price I would be paying $2400 per year!

corin_ 16y ago
It's expensive, but at the same time, there'll still be plenty of people willing to pay. I currently pay for WSJ, FT, and a bunch of magazines, and NYT will join that list when the paywall arrives. (And there are at least a couple more papers I'd pay for if they required it, to allow me to read on the iPad.)

jrockway 16y ago

This is good to hear. I think content is worth paying for, and that producers should charge for their work. Yes, it makes linking and therefore promotion harder, but a lot of readers of NYT just visit the site and read a bunch of articles. Anyway, the advertising teat is going to dry up someday, and I'd like my favorite publications to stay around. If it means paying for them with actual money, it means paying for them with actual money. There is no other alternative. People have paid for ad-free books, movies, TV, and music for ages. Why not newspapers? (Incidentally, the article doesn't say whether or not the paid pages will have advertising. If they do, they can rot in hell. If it's ad-free, though, then they are on to something.)

bryanlarsen 16y ago

In the good old days of newspapers, newspapers made 80% of their income from advertising and 20% from subscriptions and individual sales. 80% of their expenses were devoted to printing, distribution and management, with 20% going to pay content creators. The biggest reason that newspapers charge for their content is just to ensure that their newspapers go to people who actually want to read it and can afford to do so. (Advertisers aren't interested in advertising to those who think a dollar is a lot of money). That's not a problem on the web -- the marginal cost is so low that there's no reason at all to limit your readership. Yes, ad rates have gone down, but I find it very hard to believe that there's not a viable business paying journalists and giving their content away, ad-supported. Another piece of evidence is the fact that those "subway papers" give away physical newspapers for free. Yes, they don't pay much for content, but their marginal costs per reader are so much higher.