Great -- I'd like to support their journalism efforts and I'm not interested in home delivery.
NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.
21–30 of 69 posts
Re: NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.
#22In other news, "billybob to stop reading nytimes.com"
I had the same initial response where robg == billybob. Then I started thinking "why must good content be free?". The best alternatives (Economist, WSJ) all charge and I'm not about to start reading cnn.com. Perhaps the BBC site.
I could cobble together a morning read from other sources. I guess it just depends on their pricing model. I'm willing to listen, at least.
Re: NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.
#23The free service right now (having a 'mini newspaper' emailed to you every morning) is nice, but to be honest, I would value this at about $1/month, but I might pay up to $1.50/month to support journalism. I suspect that they will want to charge more than this.
You're basically willing to trade one cup of coffee for a month of decent journalism, but no more?
Re: NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.
#24The free service right now (having a 'mini newspaper' emailed to you every morning) is nice, but to be honest, I would value this at about $1/month, but I might pay up to $1.50/month to support journalism. I suspect that they will want to charge more than this.
You're basically willing to trade one cup of coffee for a month of decent journalism, but no more?
And at $1.50 it's not going to be a particularly good cup of coffee.
But I'm in the same boat. I already shell out ~$100 a year for the Economist, and various other subscriptions. If I have to start paying for all the news SOURCES I read I'm going to be out a great deal more. Note I said SOURCES. I'm willing to pay for news, but not a monthly subscription to a news site I only read occasionally.
Re: NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.
#25I'm interested to see if paid subscribers have ads alongside their articles. I would consider paying it to contribute to good journalism AND have fewer ads (I am aware of AdBlock, however, I am also aware of how the Internet economy current works.)
Re: NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.
#26It's really quite surprising that it's taken this long to reach the decision, and it will take another year before people start paying anything. No mention of what will happen to the currently free (and super) iPhone/iTouch app.
Speaking of the iPhone/iTouch app, I would love to see a caching HN app. I read NYT on my iPod Touch (without wireless) most days when I walk to/from work, but I would switch to a substitute news source rather than pay.
Re: NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.
#27"Starting in early 2011..." that's an age away in internet time. Things could have changed considerably by then.
It's just one year...the Internet in early 2009 wasn't all that much different from now. I frequent the same websites I did back then, personally.
As an example of a large change in 2009, Facebook went from 150 million active users to 350 million active users ( http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?timeline ). I consider that a fairly large change in the consumer web.
Re: NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.
#28I'm interested to see if paid subscribers have ads alongside their articles. I would consider paying it to contribute to good journalism AND have fewer ads (I am aware of AdBlock, however, I am also aware of how the Internet economy current works.)
See cable as an example.
Only channels I know that do not have any ads are the movie channels (HBO etc).
So I doubt NYTimes will pass up potential revenue from displaying ads to subscribers. Just that these ads will be more targeted and focused depending on the audience.
Re: NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.
#29In other news, "billybob to stop reading nytimes.com"
No kidding. I dropped WSJ.com last year and don't miss it.
The Internet delivers a WORLD of news sites meaning the traditional publishers have less of a voice than they did when paper was the sole medium.
Their proposed pay wall may ensnare existing readers, but who in his right mind is going to subscribe having never had a relationship with this provider before? "Oh, you want money for that story, the same story I can see a 1,000 versions of in Google News? Buh-bye."
I'd love to see the evidence that supports this decision. This reeks of someone trying to save his job.
Re: NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.
#30This again? I thought the TimesSelect experience proved that this model doesn't work.
I wonder if they'd be net better off adopting a pay-what-you-want model.