Will you pay for The New York Times online?

January 20th, 2010

When The New York Times starts charging for frequent access to its online content starting in 2011, will enough people pony up to make up for lost advertising revenue? Obviously, that’s the big question not only for the Times, but for the newspaper industry as a whole.

Once in place, you’ll be able to get a few articles (unannounced number yet) for free each month but will have to pay a flat fee to get more content after you hit that wall.

Times’ executives have not answered some key questions yet, including the price that the public is going to be asked to pay. Also unanswered is what is the overarching goal: to protect the print product (by creating a barrier to reading the content online, driving people to print) or to boost revenue for online (which is quite a gamble).

Those goals are fraught with peril and nowhere near guaranteed for success. I’m sure a lot of publishers are glad that a player as big as the Times is jumping first.

What do you think? Are you a frequent nytimes.com reader? Will you pay to keep that up in 2011?

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Entry Filed under: Newspaper

  • Risky for the NYTimes. At this stage, I'm not sure readers are willing to shell out money for articles they have been getting for free for many years. But until I hear what the plan is - I'll keep an open mind.
  • Not only will I not pay for access to NYTimes.com, I'll actively avoid linking to them. Principle and everything aside, what good am I doing anyone by linking to the New York Times when X percent of them have already hit their monthly limit? I may as well seek out similar content elsewhere, which is open and free for everyone to view.
  • Paul - that is definitely a consequence of doing this. They'll basically be opting out of the "link economy." The question is whether a newspaper Web site can survive with far fewer incoming links. Thanks for the comment! - Robert
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