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New York Times Considers $5 Monthly Web-Access Fee

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Re: New York Times Considers $5 Monthly Web-Access Fee

#11

Post by credo »

I think that it is a good idea/experiment to start charging web-users for news content (and I'm surprised that all six previous comments criticized the move)

As for Anderson's "Free" book mentioned in a previous comment, that book isn't free and I suspect that Anderson won't make the content free for downloads.

Ultimately, we live in an age where people pay $4 for latte and iPhone users pay money for cheap-to-develop, crude entertainment apps.

Sending reporters to Afghanisthan, covering the war in Iraq, tracking child abuse in Congo or investigating political corruption in Washington is an expensive proposition. So ...to the people who like the news/analysis, but won't pay for it, please consider whether the NYT (or your other favorite newspaper) is really worth less than the other things that you spend money on.

Re: New York Times Considers $5 Monthly Web-Access Fee

#12

Post by jlangenauer »

credo wrote: post #11

I think that it is a good idea/experiment to start charging web-users for news content (and I'm surprised that all six previous comments criticized the move) As for Anderson's "Free" book mentioned in a previous comment, that book isn't free and I suspect that Anderson won't make the content free for downloads. Ultimately, we live in an age where people pay $4 for latte and iPhone users pay money for cheap-to-develop…

Actually, you can read Anderson's book "Free" online at:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/17135767/FREE-full-book-by-Chris-A...

(He explicitly mentions in the book that he's giving it away for free, so this is legit.)

Re: New York Times Considers $5 Monthly Web-Access Fee

#13

Post by netsp »

ramidarigaz wrote: post #4

I'm really sorry to say that, even though I really like the quality of NYT articles, I won't pay nearly that much. Maybe $0.99/month, but I can't justify the $5/month. It's slightly sad though; all of their articles that are posted on HN are quality material. I hope they realize.

A $0.99/month is almost as much of a problem. Most times that I hit NYT it's because of a link here or on a blog or someone emails it to me. That amounts to probably 1-2 per week. That disappears with a paywall.

Re: New York Times Considers $5 Monthly Web-Access Fee

#14

Post by credo »

jlangenauer wrote: post #12
credo wrote: post #11

I think that it is a good idea/experiment to start charging web-users for news content (and I'm surprised that all six previous comments criticized the move) As for Anderson's "Free" book mentioned in a previous comment, that book isn't free and I suspect that Anderson won't make the content free for downloads. Ultimately, we live in an age where people pay $4 for latte and iPhone users pay money for cheap-to-develop…

Actually, you can read Anderson's book "Free" online at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/17135767/FREE-full-book-by-Chris-A... (He explicitly mentions in the book that he's giving it away for free, so this is legit.)

Thanks for the info. I should have checked to see if the book was available for free. I'll take a look at the book.

My point about the relative value of news/analysis content vs latte etc. still applies

Re: New York Times Considers $5 Monthly Web-Access Fee

#15

Post by mojonixon »

Maybe they should get rid of the adless login/register interstitial first (read: stop bouncing readers before they serve an ad). I don't know if they can make it with just ads, but with the way they're doing it they are doomed to failure. A while back there was a post about how plentyoffish had ads on nytimes.com. So plentyoffish is stickier/has higher cpms than nytimes? Pathetic. A lot of their articles they don't even provide a comments section (easy page view doubler). Their UI looks like it was designed by a 19th century type-setter. I know they're trying not to stray from the brand, but the brand is good writing, not ancient design.

Re: New York Times Considers $5 Monthly Web-Access Fee

#17

Post by mtd »

jlangenauer wrote: post #12
credo wrote: post #11

I think that it is a good idea/experiment to start charging web-users for news content (and I'm surprised that all six previous comments criticized the move) As for Anderson's "Free" book mentioned in a previous comment, that book isn't free and I suspect that Anderson won't make the content free for downloads. Ultimately, we live in an age where people pay $4 for latte and iPhone users pay money for cheap-to-develop…

Actually, you can read Anderson's book "Free" online at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/17135767/FREE-full-book-by-Chris-A... (He explicitly mentions in the book that he's giving it away for free, so this is legit.)

Free seems to be a relative term. From Germany I get the following:

"Sorry, this content is geographically restricted Due to our agreements with our publishing partners, the document you requested is only available to users located in the United States."

Re: New York Times Considers $5 Monthly Web-Access Fee

#18

Post by hvs »

The problem with charging for news sites is less about how many of your regular readers are willing to pay for the content and is more about how people interact with your site. The majority of news articles on the web are accessed through linking from other sites (Google, blogs, etc). If you put up pay wall, you instantly lose most of that traffic.

WSJ works around this by giving access to people coming from outside links, but I'm not sure how well that model works:

http://machinist.salon.com/blog/2008/03/21/wsj/

Re: New York Times Considers $5 Monthly Web-Access Fee

#19

Post by patio11 »

chaosmachine wrote: post #5
aj wrote: post #2

Also considering that NYTimes is a major news contributor to Twitter, Techmeme and our own HN, I wonder if this is implemented, what the impact will be!

I can guess: No more links to NYTimes.

Let's be realistic. The NYTimes will still get plenty of links. The first comment on all of them (heavily upvoted) will be "email: bugmenot@mailinator.com password: bugmenot". The second comment will be "Why do people keep posting links to the NYT? Paywalls sucksorz, yo."

And half of the people upvoting these two comments will think that their startup will succeed on ad revenue where the NYT failed.

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