New York Times Ready to Charge Online Readers

My paper is a paid site. A visitor may see the first paragraph (or is it two, I forget), of a story, but to read the entire story, a subscription is needed. Online subscribers also have access to the pdfs of the actual paper.

Print subscribers have online access included in their subscriptions.

I think it's about time newspapers start charging. Like someone mentioned before, smaller papers have a monopoly. No one covers the city councils, school boards, sports and courts in our area - not even the television stations because where I'm at, it's simply too far for them to cover unless it's a HUGE story.

And if it's a huge story, my paper still has them beat because we do have beats and we have the connections the "outside media" doesn't.

When we made the announcement we were going paid, there was a maelstrom of anger. Online comments went off the charts, including "I"m never coming back here, good bye!" Oh, and one of my favorites, "money hungry Podunk Press!"

Sure, we have ancient computers (mine is breaking down every other day now), furloughs, cut hours and absolutely no overtime.

One of the first registered on the pay site was one who posted he was never coming back.

Oh, and our online comments are also behind the paywall. Talk about something nice!

 

But at $2 a pop for a daily NYT and $5 or $5.50 for the Sunday edition, it comes to about $886 a year... and that's significant cash.

To put it in perspective... you could drink coffee every single day at Starbucks for less than that.

A newspaper should not be a luxury item, IMO.

I'll be very curious to see who the NYT charges more - the on-line users or the people who buy the paper on the newsstand.

 

One considerable upside to this meter system is, once people have paid their monthly fee, they will probably be heavy users of the site for the rest of that month. First, they'll want to justify paying the $. Second, they'll feel like they're getting something "free" from that point on, so might as well keep clicking. So maybe now you can sell the demographics of that group to advertisers for a little more money than currently.

One considerable downside is, if I click some place often enough to pay the fee, I'll probably make sure I visit other sites less and just focus on the one that I've paid for, to get my money's worth and to avoid paying second, third or fourth fees. Naturally, I'll go to the site that offers the most, a place like NYT or WSJ. I'll be less likely to visit a medium sized site and incur their fees. And even a site with a so-called monopoly on hyper-local news will have trouble getting me to pay if it is too small to justify its cost.

So this seems most feasible for the giant sites and worst of all for the ones caught in between the big boys (one-stop shopping for most content) and essential (your specific town).

 

How many "giant" sites are there? From what I've been reading today, this pretty much only applies to the NYT.

 

THIS is the sense of entitlement that newspapers need to reverse. And fast.

 

the NYT says it will still consider "bundled offers," which says, i think, that folks who specialize in local news would be perfect partners. long term, if i'm right, it puts the pinch on the mid-major, forcing them to go more and more local.

 

This was interesting...


Good Question: Will We Pay For News Online?

 

I know many will disagree but I thought this was a good take on the situation:

http://www.slate.com/id/2242085/

 

That's great ... until every news outlet starts charging $10 a month. Then you have to make a lot of tough choices, and your internet experience gets more expensive AND less complete.

 

good. the internet experience should get less fucking complete. Newspapers have ruined the industry by devaluing their product and giving it away for fucking free.

 

The paywall goes up on Monday, and can't think of a time the NYT was more indispensable than it is these days.