NYTimes Unveils Online Subscription Plan 194
An anonymous reader writes "The NYTimes announces their three pricing tiers for digital access. An interesting note: 'Readers who come to Times articles through links from search, blogs and social media like Facebook and Twitter will be able to read those articles, even if they have reached their monthly reading limit. For some search engines, users will have a daily limit of free links to Times articles.'"
Re:Two words why I'll never buy a NYT subscription (Score:5, Interesting)
My basic view on the New York Times is that it is best read the way the Soviets used to read Pravda: The purpose of reading it isn't to learn the truth, it's to learn what those in power want you to think.
That's not a useless exercise, but it's also not what it appears to be.
Re:Because information has value (Score:4, Interesting)
The thing was that when I grew up there was a selection of newspapers, and you picked one (or at most two). Investigative journalism was probably always a loss leader, you filled the rest up with cheap world news, local information that people more than willingly offer and got "free" money on stuff like announcing happenings or schedules, second hand market listings, obituaries and lots of other things that people wanted to put in the paper. You more or less had to have all the bits or people would pick a different newspaper.
Today, I can jump from one online site to the next on a story-by-story basis. Craigslist and eBay and lots of other companies will cherry-pick the lucrative bits and do pure sites based on that. World news? I can get those at the lowest bidder worldwide, being global and all. Before actually there was a value in getting a paper that'd tell you about the earthquake in Japan, today there 2342643 sites willing to tell you about it. So when you get everything else where it's cheapest, investigative journalism has to be its own profit center. The stories they make actually have to sell more than they cost to produce, there's no halo of additional income like there used to be.
That's tough. You see many magazines still do well because they cater to niches. Some financial newspapers still do good, because it's vital the information is fresh and analysis good. The other case is that the other newspapers aren't selling yesterday's news anymore. If an investigative journalist "blows the lid" on a case at 9 AM in one newspaper, by 10 AM all the others will have called someone for comment and made their own arguably legitimate news reporting and by the time it hits the evening news they'll pretty much all have an equally broad covering. So all you get is to work hard then throw it to the sharks who'll all grab their own piece while hopefully still sending a bit of the viewers to your own site. As a vital institution of society it's important, as a business model I'd run for the hills.
Re:Because information has value (Score:4, Interesting)
All good points. I wish they had introduced a fourth option, which could have been like how automatic toll payments work in the SF Bay Area (and probably elsewhere, dunno). I put in a "retainer" amount of some value (say $20). When that amount drops to below a certain value, the system automatically "tops" me back up to the max amount (the toll system is slightly more dynamic than this but you get the idea).
If I could put $20 in escrow with NY Times, I'd happily do so. Every time I read an article they could ding me $.25 or something. When I run out of article credits they top my account up by auto-charging again. I don't think many institutions could get me to subscribe in this way but NY Times is definitely one of them.
I think internet models are most profitable when they are monthly subscriptions but they lose a lot of customers who don't want a monthly fee for something they use irregularly. Amazon is basically taking those customers in the internet rental business - Netflix charges subs, and Amazon charges per rental. I wish NY Times had introduced a per rental model *in addition* to the ones they did announce, for people like me who like the service but don't use it regularly enough to justify a monthly sub.