New York Times Ends Its Paid Subscription Service

Mike writes "The New York Times has announced that it will end its paid Internet service in favor of making most of its Web site available for free. The hope is that this move will attract more readers and higher advertising revenue. 'The longer-term problem for publishers like the Times is that they must find ways to present content online rather than just transferring stories and pictures from the newspaper. Most U.S. news Web sites offer their contents for free, supporting themselves by selling advertising. One exception is The Wall Street Journal which runs a subscription-based Web site. TimesSelect generated about $10 million in revenue a year. Schiller declined to project how much higher the online growth rate would be without charging visitors.'"

Great!

[Jane Q. Public]

Now we can actually read all those articles that are lined from Slashdot!

Registration-free article

[BadAnalogyGuy]

You can get the article here [nytimes.com].

Re:Hope they open the archives

[CortoMaltese]

If they opened up the archives, their website would instantly become...

...slashdotted!

Good news everyone!

[eebra82]

Where do I sign up to read the announcement?

Ugh, the "national conversation"

[khallow]

I guess the phrase "national conversation" is enjoying a bit of life. I'll have no part of it. I think of national teenagers wielding national cellphones and sending national text messages to each other with their national thumbs.

Re:Hope they open the archives

[kalidasa]

He says that libraries are proof that government can work and you label him a socialist. Well done, Mr. Carlson!

Re:Hope they open the archives

[Professor_UNIX]

I love libraries with all my heart and soul. I live near the wonderful Harold Washington Library and I still get happy inside by just walking through their doors. Libraries are living laboratories of socialism in the belly of the profit-driven beast.

You and I must be polar opposites. I actively refuse to step foot in a library anymore and haven't been in one in over 15 years. My wife still goes to them to check out books on various things, but the few times she's tried to get me to go I've stopped at the front door and turned away and sat in the car. There's just something that feels illegal about letting people borrow books, CDs, and DVDs for free. If I do that I'd get arrested, but a library can do it under the protection of the police like some kind of organized crime racket? Fuck that. I'm probably one of the only people in the country that went through college refusing to buy used books too since I felt they were screwing the publishers by reselling the books. When I did a research paper on anything I'd just buy my reference material from Amazon.com or the book store instead.

Re:Thank God

[Daedone]

i believe the word you are looking for is condense...

Just what any good American would do:

[Kadin2048]

Just out of interest, what did you do with them when you'd finished with them?

Burn them, of course. Purely as a precautionary measure -- it makes sure that nobody can steal those poor publisher's IP when you're not around to defend it.

Re:Hope they open the archives

[Safety Cap]

Just out of interest, what did you do with them when you'd finished with them?

If he was smart, he'd have burned them in the library parking lot.

That would show them!!!!!