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NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.

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Re: NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.

#51

Post by tomjen2 »

imok20 wrote: post #40

I've been hoping for this for over a year now. I'm _more_ than happy to support their journalists oversea and at home (USA for me, as for the NYT). Without some sort of support, we wouldn't be getting the same breadth and depth and quality of news. It astonishes me when people think this should be free. KNowledge should be free, yes, but news that costs money and much, much time to acquire and then disseminate _does_…

I wouldn't mind paying for quality news, but I there is no way I will pay for news from an organization that sits on news items for more than a year.

Re: NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.

#52

Post by robg »

roc wrote: post #49
robg wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the facts really free? Take what's happening in Haiti. What's free there? Seems like a lot of very difficult work to me. Interesting last point. Citation?

There's certainly a one-time cost in gathering and validating facts (though I'd be surprised if much time at all was spent validating these days). But as facts can't be protected as intellectual property, they will inevitably be repeated, bringing the ultimate cost to consumers down to the cost of distribution. Which, today, is pretty close to $0. Also, increasingly, facts are self-reported by the audience. Who needs…

The Iranian protests are a good example where we don't know the impact without some context. They appear powerful and yet it could just be a vocal (and tech savvy) minority.

Where do people pay to comment and get preferential placement?

Re: NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.

#53

Post by tomjen2 »

robg wrote: post #23
mark_l_watson wrote: post #20

The 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?

Decent journalism?

I haven't seen a newspaper that wasn't 95% copy-paste from AP/Reuters.

When they make the newspaper 95% investigative journalism, then it can be called decent.

Re: NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.

#54

Post by jedc »

imok20 wrote: post #40

I've been hoping for this for over a year now. I'm _more_ than happy to support their journalists oversea and at home (USA for me, as for the NYT). Without some sort of support, we wouldn't be getting the same breadth and depth and quality of news. It astonishes me when people think this should be free. KNowledge should be free, yes, but news that costs money and much, much time to acquire and then disseminate _does_…

Me, too, but I hope they get their price-point right.

Paying $50 for TimesSelect to read the OpEd writers and a few other articles was way too much for me.

I'm an American living in Europe, and the NYTimes is the best place for me to get my American news "fix". The core reporting is what I really value and am happy to pay for.

Re: NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.

#55

Post by Padraig »

smiler wrote: post #38
moron4hire wrote: post #34

I didn't realize anyone still read traditional news outlets. Well, maybe only slightly sarcastic. This is the death-knell of the traditional news media. When they start actively driving consumers away by charging for services once rendered free, there is no way they will be able to recover. The Internet has enabled citizen journalists to get inside the established media's OODA loop and take them out. Established medi…

Can you point me to some good citizen journalism then?

http://talkingpointsmemo.com http://fivethirtyeight.com

Re: NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.

#56

Post by wvenable »

imok20 wrote: post #40

I've been hoping for this for over a year now. I'm _more_ than happy to support their journalists oversea and at home (USA for me, as for the NYT). Without some sort of support, we wouldn't be getting the same breadth and depth and quality of news. It astonishes me when people think this should be free. KNowledge should be free, yes, but news that costs money and much, much time to acquire and then disseminate _does_…

I don't disagree with your statements but that doesn't mean I'll be paying and here is why: I read articles from probably 15 different sites every day (and not same 15 from day to day). I simply can't afford to pay a subscription to every one of those sites nor do I want pay for just one site and get my news from a single source.

The problem is that this the same dead-tree business model moved to the web. It might appeal to people who consume their information in the classical morning newspaper way but I suspect that is a dwindling market.

Re: NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.

#57

Post by taw »

siculars wrote: post #48

How long will it be before someone implements an NYTimesShare, a la GoogleShare ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1062495 )? If they allow a certain amount of free then all you need to do is change your cookies periodically. To be sure, outfits like the NYT that bring the public high quality news need to make enough money to pay the bills and their staff. I just don't know if this is the plan that will work.

If deleting cookies is all that's required to break their paywall, it will take minutes to repurpose Financial Times paywall breaker greasemonkey script to work with NYTimes.

Re: NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.

#58

Post by ibsulon »

The NYT's target demographic is the top 40% of income producers middle age and older. They don't know how to reach us, and they're not worried about it for another few years. If they lose us (in a general sense here), they're not too worried yet. At that point, they'll start hiring people like Kos and other top bloggers on both sides of the isle as their columnists and target us.

Most people under 35 scoff at paying a newspaper because they news they print is not targeted at us.

Re: NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.

#60

Post by roc »

robg wrote: post #52
roc wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's certainly a one-time cost in gathering and validating facts (though I'd be surprised if much time at all was spent validating these days). But as facts can't be protected as intellectual property, they will inevitably be repeated, bringing the ultimate cost to consumers down to the cost of distribution. Which, today, is pretty close to $0. Also, increasingly, facts are self-reported by the audience. Who needs…

The Iranian protests are a good example where we don't know the impact without some context. They appear powerful and yet it could just be a vocal (and tech savvy) minority. Where do people pay to comment and get preferential placement?

The Iranian protests also draw into sharp relief the assumption of quality on the part of information gathering by 'real' news sources.

How long was it until American news even acknowledged the protests existed? And how much are they truly vetting their facts, when they run transparent propaganda (government dismissal of the actions of a 'few hundred' when nearly a dozen independent sources contributed pictures of at least tens of thousands) and trivially photoshop 'counter-demonstrations'?

Citizen-journalism has its flaws, but it's very similar to the case of Wikipedia (for lack of a more succinct explanation): Any one person could easily post lies, but lies tend to get exposed and corrected. And in the aggregate, it's more accurate than any individual 'expert' or 'authoritative' source.

Fark is the stand-by example of preferential comment treatment. TotalFark subscribers are kicking in $5/mo for early access to a veritable cess pit of dupes and spam, in exchange for getting first crack at discussion and token member features.

I also have personal experience with several small discussion boards that went for-pay specifically to squash spam and cover the moderator costs of abusive behavior.

It's pretty easy to see where making people give you $5 before they can post shifts the economics of spamming, flaming, harassing, etc.

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