The New York Times building in Times Square, New York. Bloomberg today that the New York Times is considering charging visitors to its website $5 a month for unlimited access.
(Frances M. Roberts/Newscom)Photos (1 of 1)
New York Times weighs charging users for access to NYTimes.com
By Matthew Shaer | 07.09.09
Put your ear to your computer. You hear that collective wailing? Yeah, that’s the sound of a thousand “content-should-be-free” purists howling in unison.
In a recent survey, the New York Times asked its subscribers whether they would be willing to pay a fee of $2.50 a for access to NYTimes.com, Bloomberg News reported today. The survey stated that “The New York Times website, nytimes.com, is considering charging a monthly fee of $5.00 to access its content, including all its articles, blogs and multimedia.”
Under this hypothetical plan, current subscribers to the Times would pay a reduced rate of $2.50 for access.
Grim days
It’s been a bad year for the newspaper industry, to say the least. Ad sales have plummeted; subscription rates have plunged; the sinking economy has taken its toll on an industry already turned on its head by the rise of the Internet. Over the past few months, many outlets have significantly cut back on their print operations.
In February, The Rocky Mountain News, the oldest newspaper in Colorado, shuttered its presses, and in March, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer stopped printing.
Remaining papers, such as the Boston Globe, have struggled to deal with declining print ad revenue – much of it lost to online classified sites – while shifting to a web-centric marketing strategy. (In April, the Christian Science Monitor began publishing its daily edition online only.) In March, the Times cut all non-union newsroom salaries by 5 percent – a major blow to an organization that has thus far withstood the worst of the storm.
Precedent
In 2007, the Times halted its Times Select program, which charged users for access to an assortment of opinion and editorial content. At its peak, 200,000 users paid for the service, generating $10 million a year in revenue for the Times company, according to Bloomberg News.
In a post on editorsweblog.org in September of 2007, Jean Yves Chainon wondered if the closing of Times Select was the end of the paid-content model. “In the digital age of free news, it will be increasingly harder for content providers to generate revenues by making users pay for their product,” he wrote. “On the other hand, there will always be specific or niche audiences that are ready to pay to access exclusive content. The question will be whether the price these audiences are willing to pay can sustain the gathering of such exclusive materials, on a regular basis.”
The future
Many media critics see the shift to a paid model as necessary for the Times, which has more than 647,695 weekday home delivery subscribers, and a web audience of millions. Here’s Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan:
Unless anybody has any other bright ideas, this is inevitable, and necessary. There’s no way the NYT—or most other papers—can continue to allow their own free website to cannibalize their revenue forever. Print subscription levels will probably never rise again in a meaningful way. Online news is the future. Online ads bring in only a fraction of the revenue of print ads. Therefore, the website has to find another way to generate cash. And that way is charging for content.
Others, like prominent media analyst Jeff Jarvis, have argued that newspapers cannot afford to hide behind a pay wall – “free is a business model (and charging money costs money),” Jarvis has written. In a January column in the Guardian in January, Jarvis argued that traditional newsroom won’t last. We can keep propping them up, he says, but eventually newsrooms will be replaced by networks of part-time journalists:
…journalism’s business and revenue, like its content, will become collaborative and networked. No one company will control news in a market any more; none can afford to. The question is: how much time is left?
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Would you pay for access to NYTimes.com? Weigh in below or on Twitter @CSMHorizonsBlog.
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2. John Fehsenfeld | 07.09.09
I would pay for access to csmonitor.com.
I am uninterested in NYTimes.com.
3. John Fehsenfeld | 07.09.09
I would pay for access to csmonitor.com.
I am uninterested in NYTimes.com.
4. Robert Monday | 07.09.09
Of course not. First the NYT is too slanted in it’s views. Secondly a newspaper that has no comics section takes it’s self way too seriously.
5. John | 07.09.09
If they charge I’ll stop reading. People aren’t going to pay when there are free alternatives. If a subscription model was working they would have kept Times Select going.
6. PK | 07.09.09
This will be a disaster for the Times. Adding a fee will accelerate their loss of readers. The Times is no longer as respected as a news source as it once was. The competition includes many well respected news sources that are free.
7. Robert Duncan | 07.09.09
I would gladly pay this fee, and I would pay it for any of the other four or five newspapers I read regularly online. I want these news organizations to survive. I enjoy not having to deal with all the newsprint waste.
9. michele bogdanovich | 07.10.09
I would gladly pay to subscribe to a newspaper website IF the website was truly user friendly and not full of pop-up ads and other annoying issues
10. Francois Bourcier | 07.10.09
I am for a model where you get an online account and you have several models for paying:
. pay-as-you-go scheme: payment based on how many articles you read (any of the last 30 days)
. day-by-day: you confirm a day and can get online edition or a coupon for printed edition. The content of this day remains available for a month.
. monthly and yearly schemes: you confirm a day and can get online edition or a coupon for printed edition
. editorial archives: access to content older than a month
11. WJH | 07.10.09
I subscribe to the print edition of the New York Times. If there was an addition charge for he Times website I would cancel the print edition and just pay for their website.
12. John | 07.10.09
I read the Monitor on-line; I used to read the daily print version. I would read the Monitor on Kindle if they had a release there. I would not pay for the NY Times either on-line or on Kindle.
13. Blake | 07.10.09
Would you pay for an online subscription of the New York Times? Vote
http://www.youpolls.com/details.asp?pid=5717
.
14. Marianne | 07.10.09
I paid for the Times Select content during the time that The New York Times ran that program, and I would not mind doing so again. It cost the same as a subscription to (in my opinion) the best South African daily newspaper would have cost me, and its content was (in my opinion) far superior.
15. Pat | 07.10.09
Good journalism costs money, and to get it, I would be willing to pay for it. But there are many sites such as CSMONITOR, LATIME, WashPost, etc. which offer similar content for free.
17. misterarthur | 07.10.09
I’m paying $500 a year to subscribe to the paper edition. Isn’t that enough? Why bilk your most loyal readers by charging them twice?
18. El Gordo | 07.10.09
I chopped/stopped a lifetime of daily NYTimes reading when the Monitor made its move last April. Has changed my life. Dropping the Times was like eliminating junk food. Its slant, self-regard and hypocrisy finally got to me.
19. MP | 07.10.09
No this will not work. I read a bunch of papers and subscribe to one ( Washington Post ). I would not pay for NYTimes when others are available for free. Now if say WPost, NYTimes, LATimes, Chicago Tribune, etc. etc . had a package deal ( where a sub to one gets you the other ) that would interest. Oh yes just for laughs throw in Fox too.
20. Annelies | 07.10.09
Do I not already pay for the Times online? Or is all that advertising revenue going to someone else? Furthermore, it’s not like I didn’t pay for the connection in the first place. This is also why people are leaving cable TV — why pay for a service and then sit through a bunch of commercials too?
And if I have to pay, I should be able to specify that it’s actually news that gets covered. So the Times would have to pitch the “Style” section (or as Dave Barry calls it, “Rich Twits on Parade”).
21. megan fox | 07.10.09
I think the Times can get away with charging for truly premium content, like the weekly Magazine feature that’s published on the weekends. The articles in that section are VERY comprehensive and long… I wouldn’t mind paying maybe a few dollars a month to get access to that.
Would I pay for the whole NYTimes.com? Definitely NOT. There are a ton of other free sources to get the SAME news, why is the NYTimes so important in this area?
22. JJ | 07.10.09
No, I would not pay. Who do they think would pay for the NYT as long as the AP stories are free on Yahoo?
Throughout American history, newpapers have competed by printing stories people wanted to read. The NYT has instead taken the pompous position of printing whatever extremist garbage it wanted to shove down people’s throats.
Exactly what does the NYT print that it thinks people will pay to read? Krugman, Friedman, Dowd, Brooks? These people can’t keep their mouths shut. They should pay ME to listen to them.
24. Ted M | 07.11.09
What about charging for an ad-free version of the Times? Set a price - say, $5/month that gets me out of having to click through interstitials, etc.
My $5 is more than NYT makes from my staring at banner ads, and makes me happy.
Not a full solution - but it might generated a little revenue.
And of course, I’m sure the Times is devastated that people who already hate the Times won’t pay for it, either.
25. David on Formosa | 07.13.09
It really depends on how they implement the business model. People that subscribe to the print version should get online access for free. They also need to offer a way for people who don’t want a full year subscription to access articles. e.g. for $5 you can get a code which allows you to access 50 articles.
26. Rick | 07.13.09
so when one subscribes to the NY Times on line, do all of the annoying on line advertisements go away?
27. i love reading the new york times. it is like a good friend.i will always love you..nytimes.you are a part of my life.you are often a starting point of contemplation and a source to insight.you are a song.you are a story.you are beautiful…..”baby,plea | 07.16.09
28. Camdingo | 07.17.09
Of course not - there is no such thing as “niche content” in the general news category of journalism when so many other outlets can offer the same news for free. The NYT is fooling itself if its business modelers think that’s a solution. Charges for news so esoteric would have to be much higher to sustain a profit.
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1. Allen750 | 07.09.09
So let me get this… I can watch the news for free or pay to read… Alright, sounds logical. /sarcasm