New York Times To Charge Online Beginning In January

[onehandle]

The New York Times will begin charging for access to its website in January, its editor revealed Thursday evening.

The Wall Street Journal reports that NYT executive editor Bill Keller made the remarks at a dinner for the Foreign Press Association.

In January, the newspaper announced plans to enact a "metered model" for its website, in which users would receive a set number of articles for free and be forced to pay for any articles beyond that limit. The announcement said the plan would go into effect in early 2011, but did not specify when. Keller's comments Thursday clarify that it will be in January.

"This will enable NYTimes.com to create a second revenue stream and preserve its robust advertising business," the newspaper said at the time. "It will also provide the necessary flexibility to keep an appropriate ratio between free and paid content and stay connected to a search-driven Web."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/14/new-york-times-to-charge_n_576111.html

[customerserviceguy]

1. Good luck with that...

When there are a million sources of free news, why would anybody pay for it? Yes, I know that the WSJ charges for stories, but the people who pay are gambler-speculators who think they're getting a jump on everybody else by getting a news story ten minutes sooner than everybody else.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Or they're people who get their company to pay for the subscription (nt)

[customerserviceguy]

9. Yeah, I hadn't considered that

but which companies are going to pay for their employees (beyond high-paid execs who can afford it out of their own pay) to read the NYT?

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. Yes, easier to justify a commercial need with a paper that specialises in commerce

The Times (owned by Murdoch) in the UK is going to try a subscription model too - I'm not even sure if that's with any allowance of free articles per month. I don't think either that or the NYT will do well, though I could be wrong.

[babylonsister]

2. iirc, they tried this before with no success. 2nd time's the charm? nt

[dipsydoodle]

3. I think all major news souces may do that eventually.

.

[madokie]

4. Didn't they try this once before

My fav online radio station, kpig, is trying once again to charge for their broadcast. I guess some just never learn the first time around.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. The difference this time is that the first few articles in a period are free

Before, they charged for any access to their 'premium content' - such as their opinion columns (note: I am not endorsing any NYT column as 'worth paying for'; though I think Krugman is worth reading).

If 'articles' means news stories and opinion columns, then this is OK for occasional visitors. The Financial Times does roughly the same at the moment - register with them for free, and then you can look at 10 articles every 30 days. So it's not worth looking at them for mainstream news stories you can find elsewhere; but if you're told about something only they cover (or they cover better than others), or a commentator, you can look at them.

[arcadian]

7. Are they trying to sink that paper?

Print subscriptions down and let's limit acces to our website. People simply won't use NYT as a source. Good. Screw those war drum beating jerks, I hope it tanks.

[AngryAmish]

8. Been nice to know ya.

[Raineyb]

10. And they're doing this because it worked so well the first time?

Oh that's right. It didn't.

Idiots.