NY Times To Charge For Online Content 488
Hugh Pickens writes "New York Magazine reports that the NY Times appears close to announcing that the paper will begin charging for access to its website, according to people familiar with internal deliberations. After a year of debate inside the paper, the choice has been between a Wall Street Journal-type pay wall and the metered system in which readers can sample a certain number of free articles before being asked to subscribe. The Times seems to have settled on the metered system. The decision to go paid is monumental for the Times, and culminates a yearlong debate that grew contentious, people close to the talks say. Hanging over the deliberations is the fact that the Times' last experience with pay walls, TimesSelect, was deeply unsatisfying and exposed a rift between Sulzberger and his roster of A-list columnists, particularly Tom Friedman and Maureen Dowd, who grew frustrated at their dramatic fall-off in online readership. The argument for remaining free was based on the belief that nytimes.com is growing into an English-language global newspaper of record, with a vast audience — 20 million unique readers — that would prove lucrative as web advertising matured. But with the painful declines in advertising brought on by last year's financial crisis, the argument that online advertising might never grow big enough to sustain the paper's high-cost, ambitious journalism — gained more weight."
Oh well (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Oh well (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh well, no big deal to me. By the time I found something on NYT that I was interested in reading, it was already in their paid section and no longer free to view.
I wonder if the printer versions and such will also be "paid only" or if that little loophole will remain unfixed.
Re:Oh well (Score:4, Interesting)
The key to having a pay-walled site is that you have content that people cannot live with. The Wall Street Journal is one such site that has been profitable almost from day one. The NYT already tried to pay-wall the editorials once and they nearly had the writers quit because they had lost their audience. This could be a serious mistake for the NYT.
Re:Oh well (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh well, I just won't bother reading it then. I will read www.bbc.co.uk or www.telegraph.co.uk or theregister.co.uk or www.zeit.de or cnn.com or slashdot.org or www.dailymail.co.uk or and the list goes on.
This is the whole problem, of course - the more sites go paywalled, the more incentive there is for the others to stay free. Very few media sources I've found actually provide a significantly better service than many other sources, so it simply doesn't make sense for me as a consumer to pay for product I can get for free. Of course, there are those that say that my way of thinking will kill journalism / music / whatever, but I'll pay as soon as there is significant incentive to (ie. if they actually start dying off).
Re:Oh well (Score:5, Interesting)
I would imagine it's easier for the to keep it as is and if everyone else does a pay wall then that's just more business they'll get looking at their ads on the international versions.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
if they were to charge those outside of the UK then they would have to ensure that their GeoIP code works flawlessly
Not really... they just have to make sure it's reasonable. Maybe a few people will go to the effort to use some proxy server, but honestly it's really not worth that effort just to save such a small fee for such a commodity service...
Re:Oh well (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not going to kill journalism - it's just going to thin it out. Advertising revenue is perfectly viable to support news sites out there - it's just not enough to support the current number of them. Every small town has a newspaper. Most larger ones have several. Every large-ish city typically has 4-5 television stations that also have their own news departments that do journalism.
Go to Google's news aggragator. Every article they have has typically a few thousand versions of the same article at different sites. In reality, rather than thousands, we really only need a few dozen traditional news sites. I don't care how much they fight it out and die until we whittle down to an appropriate amount.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not going to kill journalism - it's just going to thin it out.
Pah. Journalism has killed journalism. Your typical "journalist" these days is a person who rewords a company's press release and sources a relevant picture.
When was the last time you read an article that included a direct quote? Or asked someone a pertinent question? Or hell, even showed any knowledge of the subject material?
For online publications you typically get more journalism from the comments section. "Hey, they said it was coming out this month in the last press release. Why the delay?" "XYZ
Re:Oh well (Score:4, Insightful)
When was the last time you read an article that included a direct quote? Or asked someone a pertinent question? Or hell, even showed any knowledge of the subject material?
This morning. I suggest you read more.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The 1995 Presidential election season, give or take.
The problem with journalism is that it is in a death spiral:
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't agree I think journalism is far better than it was a decade ago. The blog community is providing excellent journalism and the cable news networks because they can focus on narrow segments of the market are increasing their quality to a level that I think is unmatched in television history.
I don't think there is any doubt you need to go back to the 1950s to find the kind of investigative reporting that is now readily available, and honestly I don't think even the 1950s is comparable.
I should say the
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Could you give examples of members of the blog community which are providing excellent (original) journalism?
Re:Oh well (Score:5, Informative)
FiveThirtyEight [fivethirtyeight.com] provides fantastic political coverage, largely based upon statistical analyses. Although the site became a bit more editorialized after the 2008 election, Nate Silver acknowledges his biases up front, and almost always provides rock-solid data to back them up. He's also been responsible for bringing down a few fraudulent pollsters.
Speaking of political commentary, Andrew Sullivan [theatlantic.com] is certainly an interesting beast. His tangents about Sarah Palin are a bit silly, although his general political commentary tends to be spot-on.
Bad Astronomy [discovermagazine.com] is an all-around fantastic science blog.
Jason Kottke's blog [kottke.org] has very little original content, although his content selections are impeccable, reminding me of what Slashdot used to be. He's good at his job in the same way that NPR is good at what it does.
There are more excellent music blogs than I can even possibly begin to enumerate. These have helped launch a mini revolution in the music industry. Although mainstream pop is still the same recycled garbage as it always was, the alternative music community is thriving, and occasionally some of the good stuff does trickle up into the mainstream.
BLDGBLOG [blogspot.com] is a great read for armchair architects. Infrastructurist [infrastructurist.com] is a great read for armchair civil engineers.
FlowingData [flowingdata.com] is a fascinating read about data visualization.
Want to look good at work? Read this [putthison.com].
I'm sure I'm forgetting a few good ones. Google solicited the reading lists [google.com] of a few experts. Their recommendations are generally quite good.
Re:Oh well (Score:5, Insightful)
When was the last time you read an article that included a direct quote? Or asked someone a pertinent question? Or hell, even showed any knowledge of the subject material?
What?
Every news story on the front page of the New York Times includes direct quotes. They are reported by real reporters, working in the actual locations where news is taking place -- so I'd say their knowledge of the subject matter is considerable.
Maybe the more pertinent question is, just what is it you have been reading that you've been calling "news"? You're pointing the finger at journalism, but maybe the real problem is closer to home than you think.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Still, there's such a thing as letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. I don't advocate giving anybody a free pass, but why are a few missteps reason enough to give everybody an automatic fail, no matter how high a standard they set?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
A blacklist is appropriate when your time is cheap, ie you can afford to wade through a lot of garbage to ferret out the nuggets that make it worthwhile. A whitelist is appropriate when your time is expensive, ie you are willing to miss out on the occasional nugget because the wading in garbage part is too much.
Since you're advocating a blacklist for news organizations, your time
Re:Oh well (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, relevant direct quotes in context, and not just from people with the same ideological background.
For fuck's sake, man. When an earthquake has just dropped a few floors' worth of concrete on half your family, what is the preferred "ideological background" you're allowed to have before you can quote "in context"? Are you even listening to yourself?
Re:Oh well (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed - and it's especially sickening when it's not just company press releases, but Government press releases complete with all the spin that entails. Even the BBC happily do this - only when they're aware of significant controversy will they note any opposing viewpoint.
And it's astonishing how many stories are copy and pasted around the news would, with trivial word changes to make it look original, and any misinformation in the original getting copied too.
The research often amounts to a quick Google at best. And sometimes not even that, in that you get mistakes that could be found out if they'd at least done that. Even with usually good sites like the BBC, I've had to correct them on misinformation that a trivial Google search would correct.
For online publications you typically get more journalism from the comments section.
Agreed. Similarly, blogs seem to have a bad reputation here on Slashdot, but actually I'd say that they, along with commenters, tend to do a far better job of "reporting on something in the news, and giving further information" than the news "journalists" do.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Try reading an actual repuable newspaper.
Err. Last time I went to www.nytimes.com? Really, go do it now and see if any of the top articles fit your description.
If your idea of an online publication is s
Re:Oh well (Score:5, Insightful)
Or fake/altered photos/videos - if you're Fox News...
Hey mods (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't Flamebait. We're talking about why media is failing these days, and this is absolutely relevant.
Currently Fox news is #1 and this is what they're serving up for the public. It's unethical, misleading, and just plain flat-out wrong. And currently (if the numbers mean anything) this is what the public actually wants.
This should scare the absolute crap out of you.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Any sources other than left-wing Huff post or media matters?
Honestly, no. There are decreasingly fewer and fewer non-blog, non-editorial sources for anything. That's what this whole discussion has been about. Legit and credible news sources barely cover the actual news, let alone fact-check one another. Fact-checking seems to be a vital service that is done exclusively by bloggers with an opposite ideological slant or by Jon Stewart.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
So the new news model, is as an aggregator of specialist journalists or more likely journalist teams. A group of journalists create team, so that they can provide continuous coverage, which is then feed to news aggregators. What hurts the New York Times most, is keeping the print presses running and keeping the associated staff on site, rather than just going all digital, with remote offices for everyone but the technical services team and editors.
The internet is doing to the news services what the gover
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Quite right. There is an excellent Book called Flat Earth News on how news is collected/created these days.
For another angle on the issue, read "Manufacturing Consent" by Herman and Chomsky. There is also a documentary on youtube.
Re:Oh well (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, I can see how that kind of thing could be "crowdsourced", actually.
I'm more worried about the people that go to, say, local planning commission meetings. It's skilled work to follow that sort of thing and be able to give an interesting factual account. My fear is that the only "volunteer" coverage we'll see of that kind of thing is by people with an axe to grind and without necessarily a great grasp of the basics.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, I completely agree. I think the problem right now is in not identifying what areas do and do not need real journalists and instead paying a full time journalist for every stupid article.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"I'm more worried about the people that go to, say, local planning commission meetings."
What people? Where I live (close proximity to a State capital) they no longer go unless it is expected to be significant. I doubt they ever really did to any extent. Hell, their coverage of legislative action sucks.
"My fear is that the only "volunteer" coverage we'll see of that kind of thing is by people with an axe to grind and without necessarily a great grasp of the basics."
Already done. The best coverage is done
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is a very good description of 9/10ths of the articles you already find in the blogging world; which is why I don't think that web 2.0 is going to be a particularly adequate replacement for traditional journalism.
Re:Oh well (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You may be too young to remember this but papers you used to experiment with a national / local split. That's the reason for the A/B/C/D... stuff.
A was produced at headquarters. B was produced at local offices. C/D/E were produced by specialized vendors / or run weekly. That's what's happening on a national scale. Let the local papers do the B section stuff. Tell me about the mayor, but actually do a good job covering the news.
Re:Oh well (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm playing Devil's advocate here a little, but I suppose the trouble is what happens at the latter end of the curve.
When we're down to 12 sources, what then? Supposing they need to drum up revenue to support doing the research once done by thousands of others, so as to give us accurate and factual news, they might consider charging for their content. Once they do, let's say the public decides they will go get the content for free by reading blogs or aggregators, which provide handy summaries of the news, alongside helpful (if biased) interpretations. What then?
If the dying-off trend continues, all we're left with is partisan news which gets its funding from something other than doing good research and writing quality articles. Or we're reading the blog posts of the relatively-informed, and trusting them to abide by some kind of journalistic standard.
That's not really a good thing, now, is it?
Good journalism costs money.
Re:Oh well (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that the NYT has never given us accurate and factual news...
It is usually unwise to make unqualified statements.
You may not like the NY Times, but it certainly appears there are counter-examples to the assertion that it "has never given us accurate and factual news." For example, a trivial spot check reveals an article on the site today: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/us/17census.html?ref=us [nytimes.com] That article reports that Census Bureau data shows "the decline [in employment] was greater among black and Hispanic couples than non-Hispanic white ones." This appears to be true (see: http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/families_households/014540.html [census.gov] ), and as a consequence your statement appears false.
It is likely the Times has made many mistakes over the years, but if your intent is to demonstrate the Times is a poor source of news you should probably show that it has made more and/or more significant errors than other news organizations, especially as related to the quantity of information reported. It would be interesting to see real data arguing that, as opposed to anecdotal or notional generalizations.
As it stands, it's hard to take seriously your comment's moderation as "insightful."
MOD UP (Score:3, Insightful)
And then there were none (Score:3, Interesting)
Every small town has a newspaper. Most larger ones have several.
This is simply not true.
The Courier Express folded in 1982.
The Buffalo News [owned by Warren Buffet] has been the only daily newspaper worth a damn in Western New York for twenty-eight years.
The one newspaper city has become the norm. The major city without a daily newspaper is a very close at hand.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Every small town has a newspaper. Most larger ones have several.... In reality, rather than thousands, we really only need a few dozen traditional news sites. I don't care how much they fight it out and die until we whittle down to an appropriate amount.
I wish my small town had one. We used to. Now we don't even rate a paragraph in the nearby big city's paper/news site - unless there's a big, ugly crime or really salacious scandal.
Except for bad news, there's almost no local news. (Yes, there's still the events calendar, but listings in that are paid for.)
We are getting too little news from far too few sources. Sadly, too few peope seem to care.
Re:Oh well (Score:5, Insightful)
Every large-ish city typically has 4-5 television stations that also have their own news departments that do journalism.
Oh, please. TV news is the opposite of journalism.
Every small town has a newspaper.
So what? The problem isn't the quantity of newspapers, it's the quality.
I live in San Jose, CA, which used to have a first rate paper. Lots of good content, a long history of award-winning winning investigative journalism, and serious coverage of the computer business. It was even profitable. Craigslist destroyed their classifieds business, which used to be their biggest profit center, but they were still doing pretty well.
Then some "activist investors" decided it wasn't profitable enough. They forced the chain that owned it to sell out completely, and this paper ended up with a chain whose main talent seems to be cost-cutting. Now the page count is down (like 2/3) the quality of the writing is down, they no longer have access to their former chain's news bureaus, and circulation is down.
Profits? What profits? For that you need subscribers. I used to subscribe and read it every day — now I rarely even bother to read it online.
Really, the decline in advertising revenue is only part of the problem, as this sad story illustrates. There's also the fact that most newspapers (including all those small town papers) belong to mammoth media companies that are run by bean counters.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And the converse: the more sites go paywalled, the safer it is for the next to go paywalled. It's not unlike the airline industry, which has been in revenue hell forever, being essentially nothing but price competition. Now, they're starting to charge for things they didn't used to. The public is up in arms! But they're all doing it. If you don't like it, you can drive.
Are the airlines/newspapers evil for wanting to make money? Are the consumers evil for wanting something to cost as close to nothing a
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Hmmm... but they would all need to do it. And there's nowhere near the level of consolidation in global news sources that there is in airlines. That's going to make it a lot harder to get a cartel together. On top of that, the last
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Granted, the blogging community are unlikely to finance a reporter who wants to infiltrate the Taliban, at least not any time soon.
On the other hand, locals could report such information, often with far more insight since they actually live there.
Re:Oh well (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the dying off is a part of the solution, not the problem...
It's just a matter of evolution, their dead brings life to many small ones, then the process starts again to grow big.
Re:Oh well (Score:5, Interesting)
I should note the Tribune dislikes Murdoch, so don't equate them with his "reporting".
Re:Oh well (Score:4, Insightful)
Please don't read dailymail.co.uk, it will only encourage them.
*shudder*
Free-Market Principle: Quality commands a price. (Score:3, Interesting)
The "New York Times" (NYT) also publishes content that is quite good (but is not as good as the content from the WSJ). The NYT will also succeed at charging for its content.
The good things in life are not free. Reporters, columnists, and editors work hard day and ni
Re:Free-Market Principle: Quality commands a price (Score:4, Informative)
The NYT will also succeed at charging for its content.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't they already try this and find it a dismal failure? I seem to remember I stopped reading any of their articles some years ago when they began some stupid restrictions on access.
Re:Free-Market Principle: Quality commands a price (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is precisely why I (and apparently many others) pay for access to wsj.com. It's something like $8-12/month. That's well worth it to get access to the in-depth content they provide. Sure, I browse other news sites to scan headlines, and I would probably even be willing to pay for one or two more high-quality sites.
What I will not pay for is a web site that does not provide me with original content, like sites that just aggregate the stuff of the wire, from the AP and Reuters.
I also pay for Slashdot by the way - of course most of the content other than "Ask Slashdot" is rebroadcast from other websites - but the original content here is the lively (and IMO worthwhile) discussions.
Re:Free-Market Principle: Quality commands a price (Score:5, Insightful)
Open Source killed my software revenues (consulting)
Open source products actually make consulting easier for most people -- there are products the customer / consultant have actually heard of, and they can be implemented much sooner than a custom solution could be scoped, coded, tested and deployed. Now if you're doing old-school custom software what's killing you isn't necessarily open source, it's the internet. Having customers able to easily locate, choose, and download an application that meets their needs makes the idea of software customization -- in a lot of situations -- obsolete.
That said, I've been programming for a very long time. I saw the change coming and embraced it. If that's not your thing then so be it, but you should know the reasons and they are not "open source". It's not some dark voodoo, it's instant gratification, available for everyone. Blame the internet, blame competition, but many people are making money with Open Source software and I'm one of them.
If a car analogy helps you, it's like the local car dealer keeping the local prices high for years because there weren't any other choices around, and boom! CarMax moves into the next town. Local people now have choice. Why would they want to use the local car dealer? If you can't answer that, then you (as the local car dealer) will be forced into another career choice. You must provide added value that the customer will not only understand, but will pay for. CarMax isn't the problem, it's that you are still running on an antiquated business model that provides no value proposition for the consumer. CarMax just provided the catalyst for your customers to understand they are no longer without options. Blaming CarMax only shows you don't understand the problem.
Re:Oh well: me, too (Score:5, Interesting)
Well up to a few years ago my City's bus service was in trouble. In the past 4 years though they have completely turned the service around. In the past 4 years, every price change has been a price cut, while going from being in debt to record surpluses.
They did that by simplifying the costs, making it easier to ride eliminating transfers (Including in seat transfers when the buses traveled between different sections of the city, making it possible that you would need to "transfer" up to 2 times while never exiting the bus) and only charging per ride and passes for unlimited rides for a certain period of time.
Unprofitable routes are now now mostly paid for by businesses on those routes in exchange for having preferential bus stop placement, or having the bus even pull into the companies parking lot at peak times for people arriving and departing.
The NYT could make it easier to pay for the articles (Text a code to a number, and 25 cents is added to your phone bill) Make it so sections covered by other newspapers are free, and have the nitch articles be paid, have all you can learn plans, offer early access to articles to companies in fields the company reports on at a premium subscription rate.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What I want in journalists is to select the information that is relevant for me. The NYT does this rather well, as do other newspapers such as the Economist and the Guardian in the UK, Spiegel, FAZ and the Sueddeutsche in Germany, or Le Monde
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think I vomited in my mouth a little.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed, the New York Times has moved to the left in the past 30 years while the American mainstream has remained, largely center right.
You've got to be kidding! The NYT almost single-handedly convinced the much of the American public to support the Iraq War effort through front page scare stories by Judith Miller, while Scott Ritter and others casting doubt on the need for war were marginalized. In many ways the NYT speaks for powerful interests among the East Coast elite and Wall Street. Their "star" bus
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Conservatives expressing their displeasure with NYT and WaPo are akin to Br'er Rabbit expressing his displeasure at being thrown into the briar patch.
Re:Oh well (Score:4, Insightful)
Your post would be more interesting if you could define 'liberal' and 'centre right'. The NY Times is not left-wing. The Guardian is left-wing. Unless you're using the American definition of 'left' which is basically anyone who objects to bringing back the workhouses. How can a newspaper with such deference to Wall Street and capitalism be left-wing?
In any given election, 99% of Americans vote for candidates who support large government spending on social projects, so I'm not sure how right-wing the population really is. Bear in mind the teabaggers are a very small group of Fox News astroturfers who had no problems with big government when a white president was giving blank cheques to the military.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It wasn't "classy libs" that chose to use the term "teabag" to describe the actions of sending teabags to Obama, hold "teabagging" parties and the like. The clueless choice of term was quite rightly mocked, and this carries no sembleance to the results of your "thinking". As soon as you can point to official "buttfuck" parties held by Liberals, where they "buttfuck" right wingers, your "thinking" will accidentally appear insightful.
Perhaps that is what you're hoping will happen? Quite a coup if it happens,
Re:Go right ahead. (Score:4, Insightful)
"If the NYT and WSJ can go and stay non-free, it will be a matter of time before the BBC and the Telegraph and the Register and CNN go non-free as well."
BBC - and the equivalents, such as SVT in Sweden, NHK in Japan, and so on - are public broadcasters. They are not allowed to charge for content, nor is it in their interest to do so (they'd not get to keep most of the money anyhow). They, and their websites, will stay open no matter what. I guess NPR in the US would be in a similar situation.
And the more papers go non-free, the larger the readership - and the advertising revenue - at the remaining free ones.
Good Bye, New York Times (Score:4, Insightful)
You were significantly less full of crap than other newspapers. We will miss you. :'-(
Re:Good Bye, New York Times (Score:5, Insightful)
Kevin Mitnick begs to differ.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Really, what about this glorious, titanic, cosmic pile of festering turds? [nymag.com]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You were significantly less full of crap than other newspapers.
I take this to mean that you've never read the NYT then. Even as bad as Fox News is for promoting Republicans, the NYT is WAY worse at promoting Democrats.
NY Times To Charge For Online Content (Score:3, Interesting)
sayonara nyt (Score:3, Funny)
NY Times can do it, can your paper do it? (Score:3, Insightful)
The New York Times can make an effective paywall because they hold the rights to columnists that share opinions that are nationally relevant. Local NY city news is covered by other papers, so they need exclusive content like the book reviews and bestseller lists.
WSJ has business opinions. Nobody's going to pay for press releases restated, or the S&P 500 values... but reviews and opinions are still worth something.
Can your local paper do that when your local TV station has a newsroom covering the same topics and also posting to the web for free? Nope. I don't really care what's going on in local high school sports, and that's about that's exclusive to my local paper.
Re:NY Times can do it, can your paper do it? (Score:4, Insightful)
> The New York Times can make an effective paywall because they hold the rights to columnists that share opinions that are nationally relevant.
Of course they might not be all that relevant when people stop seeing their columns. Seriously, most online folk these days start at an agregator, whether that is a set of favored blogs or drudge, realclearpolitics, etc. Even if the people who create those key influencer sites subscribe to the NYT it is doubtful they will link to content behind a paywall if the past is any guide. Thus those who are contracted to write only for the NYT will, as they have already experienced in the past, see their influence decline. Good riddence to the lot of em as far as I'm concerned. Personally they end of the NYT will be a great day, this decision is a good step toward that happy event.
Re:NY Times can do it, can your paper do it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Many (but definitely not all) big-name columnists' opinions are in fact "better" than almost everyone in the blogosphere, for a few key reasons:
I'd trade 500 bloggers for 5 Times columnists any day of the week.
Newspapers Place in Our Society (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not a big fan of paying for any online subscription, and to contradict myself I am not sure I would for this (I pay for a regular Boston Globe as my own attempt to try and keep the journalist machine going), but somehow, I still wish for them to be successful. Like their own struggles, I have no idea what the obvious answer is. If you value similar, I am not saying pay for the NYT, but I recommend finding something you are willing to put a few dollars into every month, even if its just your local Sunday paper.
I want to pay! (Score:3, Interesting)
I know newspapers have to make a living, and I don't care if that comes out of my pocket. But they seem to be unable to come up with a payment model I can live with.
I access a lot of news sites. No way I can pay a subscription to all them, or even to all my favorites. There has to be some way I can access all those different sources without breaking the bank. But newspapers can't seem to find it. Micropayments seem to be an obvious solution that never goes anywhere. (Yes, I know all the objections. I'd take
RIP, New York Times (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:RIP, New York Times (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm going to pay. I read the NYTimes online everyday; a habit I started more than 10 years ago. The sites/shows you have listed are really just aggregators. Someone needs to be there, hit the pavement and get the story. This article [nytimes.com] is a great example of good reporting. I think it is worth value. If I have to pay a few cents for it... so be it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
These days, I get all my news from either FARK, Slashdot, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, or The Colbert Report.
No you don't.
You are getting your news second, third or fourth hand.
Filtered and packaged by whatever passes for an editor at these sites. The Reader's Digest version.
The same thing happened with the Wall Street Journal, too -- they're not even on my radar anymore (Thanks, Rupert!)
A celebration of ignorance does not inspire confidence.
The WSJ is on your CEO's radar. His customers and clients. H
What are they doing to cut costs? (Score:5, Insightful)
I honestly don't know what they are doing to cut costs - but if they believe they are becoming a "global newspaper of record" - then maybe they ought to cut ties with New York. I'm sure doing business in NYC ain't cheap - do they really need an entire building in midtown Manhattan? I could see an office - something like what they presumably have in DC - as a place for reporters who are literally on the local beat to do officey type things. But I'm willing to bet that the business of running the paper could be done just as well from the booneys as in the middle of the big apple for a whole lot less. Sure. you'd lose some die-hard manhattanite employees, but nobody's irreplaceable - especially when the world is changing as fast as the publishing world is...
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I'm sure doing business in NYC ain't cheap - do they really need an entire building in midtown Manhattan?
The New York Times management has made mistakes, but they aren't complete dummies. They don't actually have an entire building [guardian.co.uk] in midtown Manhattan anymore. But as far as being a "global newspaper of record," being based in what some have called the "capital city of the world" isn't a bad idea.
I'll probably sign up for this (Score:5, Insightful)
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Redux (Score:4, Insightful)
Didn't they try that before.
They built it and nobody came.
I didn't bother reading it until it was free.
Reading for a fee, I'll skip it again.
There is more than enough free content and they aren't producing enough interesting content.
Why should people pay them? (Score:4, Interesting)
So, if they now will be behind a paywall, while other media are free, how are they going to convince us about their objectivity? Or why should people pay them?
Bad decision (Score:4, Funny)
First (Score:4, Funny)
First they came for the free news sites and I said nothing.
existential question (Score:5, Funny)
Who would pay money to read Tom Freidman, the Mustache of Understanding?
Tell you what, though, I get the Sunday NYT delivered to my door every week. I almost quit when they stopped having a separate Books section, but I knew I'd miss the puzzles too much.
Anyway, how else would I get my subliminal liberal marching orders from Comrade Soros? I tried watching Fox News for a while but found myself gaining weight and wanting to do oxycontin. When I asked my wife to wear hairspray and librarian glasses and say "you betcha!" during sex, I knew I had to do something about it. Fortunately, there are liberal re-education camps called "libraries" where you can learn to break the Fox News habit.
After I stopped watching Fox News I lost the weight, and my wife was willing to sleep with me again, but hell, I still want to do me some of that hillbilly heroin.
How to do this right? (Score:5, Insightful)
The three posts I'm seeing so far all assume this will be the death knell of the Times. But the alternative if nothing changes is for the Times to piss all its money away until it closes its doors in bankruptcy. There has to be a happy medium. Somebody has to try to find it, and that's what the New York Times is doing now.
mrphoton says he'll read www.bbc.co.uk instead. That's all well and good, but the BBC is supported by British taxes, while the New York Times is a private newspaper. There's a strong tradition of separation of media and government in the U.S. and it isn't likely to ever change. But some have proposed operating newspapers as nonprofit organizations, which may be a close compromise. In that arrangement, newspapers would essentially be relying on government to leave them alone, by not charging them taxes. Where their operating expenses would come from, however, remains an open question.
To me, charging subscription fees for access to content makes a lot of sense. One of my favorite publications, The Economist, has always had a pay-wall around most of its content. And while advertising rates for magazines have been dropping across the board, subscriptions to The Economist have actually been climbing in the last few years. Why? Cynics say it's because people want to look intellectual by carrying around a copy of The Economist that they actually never read. People who subscribe to The Economist say they do so because of the marked differences between it and other, more traditional newspapers: The Economist prints zero celebrity gossip, and it never fiddles around with stories about car crashes or green gardening. It has a global focus. Its stories are well-researched, thorough, and not dumbed-down. In other words, if I'm going to pay to have someone deliver a stack of printed pages to my mailbox every week, The Economist will bring me far less wasted paper.
It's also mentioning that The Economist does not print any bylines for its articles. So to Tom Friedman's complaints, cry me a river. Do I subscribe to the New York Times because I want an informative, timely, in-depth news resource, or do I subscribe because I like to read so-called rock star columnists? Personally, I don't even read Tom Friedman's column, because his books have been massive disappointments. Talk about overrated. So should a guy like Tom Friedman be allowed to hold an entire news gathering organization hostage to his own ego? Tell you what, Tom: If you're such a public treasure, start a blog. Surely the people will flock to it. Or could it be that the only reason anybody read your column at all was because of the New York Times, and not the other way around?
The success of a subscription program for the Times' Web site will probably all depend on the price they charge for it. Certainly there will have to be opportunities to get stuff for free, as Salon.com has done. Even The Economist offers a 14-day free trial. Even then, the idea that anyone will pay even a fraction of the cost of a subscription to the New York Times just to read one or two articles a week -- or one or two articles a month -- is nuts. Somebody needs to do the hard research to figure out a realistic rate of payment for the content that people actually read. A monthly or yearly subscription fee, when nothing is showing up in the mailbox and you never remember to go and look at the site, isn't going to work.
At the same time, I worry about the concept of newspapers as a public good. Everyone, no matter their income level, is entitled to know what's going on in their government and the world at large. If newspapers close themselves off only to paying subscribers, you force the economically disadvantaged to venues such as TV news. On the one hand, local TV news has been turned over almost entirely to fluff. On the other, cable outlets like Fox News look increasingly like propaganda weapons.
So what to do? I've long tho
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mrphoton says he'll read www.bbc.co.uk instead. That's all well and good, but the BBC is supported by British taxes, while the New York Times is a private newspaper. There's a strong tradition of separation of media and government in the U.S. and it isn't likely to ever change.
You seem to be missing the point that the BBC often has better coverage of U.S. news than U.S. newspapers (specifically including the NYT) and by better I mean less chock-full of bullshit and sensationalism. Not that those things aren't in plenty of evidence over at the beeb — they certainly are. The LA Times is twice the paper the NYT ever was, and it blows too.
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so, what newspaper do you work for?
I've worked for the San Francisco Chronicle in the past but most of my work has appeared in tech trade publications, most particularly InfoWorld, where I spent several years as a senior editor. It's not like I make any secret about it.
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maybe the question should be "what paper has more eyeballs belonging to people with excess money"...
Not at all. The New York Times requires registration, but it's free. That's not bringing in the advertisers, apparently.
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OK, now you're running around in circles. I ask what newspaper has more eyeballs than the New York Times. You say only people with "excess money" read it. I tell you it's free right now. You say nobody reads it because nobody wants to read it, because they don't believe it's "high quality." Here's where I remind you that the New York Times has won more Pulitzer Prizes than any other news-gathering organization, and it gets more traffic than any other online newspaper (but the eyeballs still aren't paying th
new media (paper) models (Score:3, Insightful)
This sounds like a bunch of desperate people. What the news industry seams to have lost track of is that the Internet is a new medium, unlike the printing press, radio stations or tv stations it not a business that
Its seems silly to ignore these differences, and I doubt a successful business can be built, with out these issues being taken into account.
Perhaps some kind of low cost strategy, such as articles being written by free lancers (who would be paid on a commission/bonus only basis). There could then be a reply service which would allow another side to the story, giving the people who read the articles the two arguments to judge for them selves. Putting all of this online and allowing people to subscribe to a topic they find of interest (and delivering a individual paper) to your own home every day/week for a fee. This will give you Google like ability to profile users (address plus billing details) along with more effective targeted adverting. Its a lot more complicated than this but its a start.
Of cause this would open up another can of worms (big media is also about control of information)
The Times has its reasons for doing this... (Score:5, Insightful)
...and I don't think it's entirely out of greed. The simple truth is that you can't pay columnists, reporters and other staff unless you have sufficient revenue. If people are abandoning the print version of the paper, and advertisers don't see the return they expect from ads, you lose a lot of per-copy revenue and ad revenue.
The truth is that the old model of "sell a paper for $1.00 a day, collect $XM in ad revenue per year, and your profit is that less your employment and other costs" is going away. Now, quality media outlets are faced with a tough choice. (Yes, I know, we can debate quality, but I happen to like the Times.) They have to choose to provide their content free, while only recouping part of their costs from ad sales, or charging for content and hoping enough people like the paper enough to pay.
I see this causing two problems:
For journalism in general: When are people going to realize that actual journalism, investigative reporting, and other well-researched pieces cost money? Call me an old fogey if you want, but I think this transition we're going through is going to make it much tougher to get well-written, well-research, less-biased content. Look at how CNN has jumped in with both feet on the whole Web 2.0/Twitter/Facebook user-generated content. Some of the well-written stuff actually makes the television news, but the vast majority of it is a garbage dump compared to a legitimate news organization. Can you imagine the historical record of the Haitian earthquake filled with stuff like "OMG OMG teh quakez suX0rz dude" ? That's overblown, but you get the idea... Same thing goes for the reporting of both sides of an issue. Would you rather have a news organization making some attempt to neutrally report, or would you rather have the Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh blogs against the ACORN and ELF blogs? Investigative reporting is even more important, and I'm not talking about papparazzi stalking celebrities. Would Watergate have ever been uncovered without a news organization paying to cover it?
For employment: I've seen this kind of rationalization of every single penny of cost happening over the last few years. Outside of journalism, it happens every day...a software developer in India is 10% the cost of a US one, or we can eliminate this raft of manual processes by automating the whole thing. Some of this is good...I'm glad I'm not a file clerk at a huge insurance company, for example. But, it has to stop somewhere. There are some people who need mundane work. Manufacturing used to provide that, now it's gone. Not everyone can be a manager, or sell things, or manage projects. If you eliminate everyone's job, especially those at the low end of the skill spectrum, you're going to have a lot of unemployed consumers who can't buy your product.
Re:The Times has its reasons for doing this... (Score:4, Interesting)
In today's world, W. Mark Felt would have had an anonymous identity and leaked good information to Firedoglake or Daily Kos. The blogs would have picked up on it. The information would have sounded credible and so a Rachel Maddow would have started to cover it in detail and the whole thing breaks a year earlier than it did under the Washington Post.
Re:The Times has its reasons for doing this... (Score:4, Informative)
Name an important piece of investigative journalism done by the Times in the last ten years. I can't. And I'm a regular reader. It's increasingly a "lifestyle" paper. It sees its crucial missions as propping up the real estate market in NYC (with fascinating articles like the one suggesting that since banks aren't lending, maybe you young people can borrow the half-million for a starter apartment from your folks), and pretending to be liberal while propping up most of the neocon fantasies about an American new world order (even before cheerleading Iraq, it was responsible for the absurd Whitewater charges).
I like half their editorial columnists. They have a couple of good economic writers. And I'm entertained by the lifestyle and real estate fluff. Plus at least their front page is by their own writers rather than the AP - which continues a rapid descent in quality too. And some of their NYC coverage is unavailable elsewhere - although only of interest to people with lives or roots in the city.
Smaller audience for Friedman and Dowd? (Score:4, Interesting)
Huzzah!
Seriously though, it seems that the management's earlier lesson didn't sink in too well:
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2007/09/17/new-york-times-figures-out-the-web-its-free/ [antiwar.com]
I get the "good journalism costs money" argument. However, what this shows is that while it is possible for businesses to make money off internet advertising, the Times couldn't figure out how to do it.
While I doubt we'll ever know, my guess is that their revenue from subscription will be less than that from advertising. If their top tier talent hang around, they will bleed money until they are bought by someone with deeper pockets (who will reverse this dumb-ass decision and start some serious cost cutting). If they walk, then the value of the business will shrink making them an unlikely target. My guess is the latter. The talent will walk. An "indie" Krugman/Friedman/Dowd blog could probably earn enough advertising revenue to support them. The rest will disappear.
If that happens then there will be a REAL shakeup in the old-school media franchises.
Let Them Try (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope this works for them (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Insightful)
The NYT (and subsidiaries like the Boston Rag, er, Globe) pass off op-eds as news and ignore stories which don't support their biases
What can I say? Citation needed.
I find some of the anti-journalism bias I see on this site to be a little scary. It seems like the kind of anti-intellectualism that allows our society to play right into the hands of propagandists and demagogues, and it's frankly not what I'd expect of the /. audience.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Insightful)
The NYT (and subsidiaries like the Boston Rag, er, Globe) pass off op-eds as news and ignore stories which don't support their biases
What can I say? Citation needed.
I find some of the anti-journalism bias I see on this site to be a little scary. It seems like the kind of anti-intellectualism that allows our society to play right into the hands of propagandists and demagogues, and it's frankly not what I'd expect of the /. audience.
And on that note, the wonderful thing about NYT opinion pieces (which are clearly labeled as such), is that they involve lucid argumentation and reasonable discussion. They're not meant to be propaganda and they would be very ineffective as such, because tend they argue an issue rather than asserting a point. Most people look for evidence to support, rather than shape, their beliefs. If you're in the rational minority, intelligent discussion is always useful.
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There are many, many examples, but here's a personal favorite: back in 2002/2003, the Times ran 95 stories in nine months [blogspot.com] on the supposedly big controversy involving the Augusta National Golf Club, which didn't admit women as members. When the time came for the big demonstration against the club, about 40 people showed up. I humbly suggest tha
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Informative)
CRU being hacked and proven to provide false data, never reported by NYT.
Because the stolen e-mails proved no such thing. But since you request: Hacked E-Mail Data Prompts Calls for Changes in Climate Research [nytimes.com]
Rush Limbaugh being misquoted and slandered, never reported by NYT.
Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. His opinions are not news. Similarly, if I call Rush a doodie-head that's not news, and if some other media organization misquotes Rush it's not news. But since you asked, here [nytimes.com] is the New York Times topic page for Rush Limbaugh. Find me where he was misquoted and slandered by the Times and you may be onto something.
The list is COUNTLESS
You've almost counted to one so far. You're doing well, don't stop now.
you just don't know about it because you are too ignorant to look up more than one source of news
Based on your own preferred source of news entertainment, I'd reckon the list of my sources of news would be beyond your comprehension.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Insightful)
Good luck with that. It works for the WSJ because the WSJ reports actual news; investors will not tolerate op-ed rants being passed off as news because it would make the WSJ worthless for financial analysts. The NYT (and subsidiaries like the Boston Rag, er, Globe) pass off op-eds as news and ignore stories which don't support their biases - such lack of objectivity is not something you are likely to succeed in selling online to people in business. People at home will just tune to CNN and FauxNews for their daily dose of op-eds rather than sit in front of a browser to pay for their spoon-fed propoganda.
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Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Interesting)
Good luck with that. It works for the WSJ because the WSJ reports actual news; investors will not tolerate op-ed rants being passed off as news because it would make the WSJ worthless for financial analysts.
As a financial analyst, I call bullshit on that. Serious investors don't rely on the WSJ alone, exactly because it is full of brainless neocon op-eds, and gratuituos deliberate political spin even in its news articles. Anybody with a brain wouldn't rely on it for political/economic coverage, even if it often gets some basic company news right (though even there it doesn't hurt to double-check with the FT, or Bloomberg News, or the Economist or some other more reputable paper).
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Actually, I think it says in general, the public are cheapskates AND the NYT has a non-viable business model.
Still, in a world built on scientific principles, you need to make the odd experiment. NYT are about to experiment with a metered access system. If the results are worrying, then it's time to experiment with the next business model.
There'll be one of three outcomes: They find one that works again, and it's business as usual, or they'll find that there's no business model available that lets them c
I don't think so. . . (Score:3, Interesting)
Well , their suicide sets a good example for a dated corrupt media. A good idea defended by the founding fathers and others was reduced to a shallow meaningless lie of propaganda for government, liberal causes and big business. What doesn't evolve as necessary, dies as superfluous tripe. It won't be missed.
It won't die. It's too important to the ubiquitous propaganda effort required to keep Objective Reality subdued down to a mere nagging thought at the back of everybody's mind. My guess is that this NYT