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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.

#61

Post by CamperBob »

wvenable wrote: post #56
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 ap…

It seemed obvious to me in 1994 that Web content syndication was eventually going to be the answer to your question ("How can I afford to subscribe to 15 different providers?")

People laughed at me then, they laughed at me when I said it again around 2000, and they'll laugh at me now.... but that still doesn't change the fact that it needs to happen, and eventually will.

It could be that the coming wave of tablet/e-reader platforms will be the last piece of the syndication puzzle. It's a safe guess that the New York Times will have someone at the Apple event next week, pitching a subscription deal. If they offer me access to several other major metro papers/special-interest broadsheets along with that NYT subscription, they've got a deal.

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

#62

Post by CamperBob »

jedc wrote: post #54
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.

It was too much for the OpEd writers, too; they don't like being locked inside a paywall any more than the rest of us like being locked outside of one.

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

#63

Post by kmod »

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 understand how you make the jump from "I want to support this company" to "everyone should be forced to support this company". If you want to support them, there are ways you can do it currently, so if you really want to support them than you would have done it already. Are you saying that you want them to be supported, but you want other people to shoulder the cost?

I think charging or not for their services is definitely the NYTimes's prerogative. That doesn't mean that it's a good choice. Personally, I think it's a bad choice, because they're going to alienate some of their most loyal readers. I, too, wish that the neswpapers could find a sustainable way to remain profitable, but I don't think this is it. But if there is no sustainable way, I guess that means that newspapers actually aren't as valuable to us as we like to think, because otherwise we'd be willing to pay for it.

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

#64

Post by blhack »

kmod wrote: post #63
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 understand how you make the jump from "I want to support this company" to "everyone should be forced to support this company". If you want to support them, there are ways you can do it currently, so if you really want to support them than you would have done it already. Are you saying that you want them to be supported, but you want other people to shoulder the cost? I think charging or not for their services…

everyone should be forced to support this company

They're not trying to force anybody to support them. They're changing their business model in order to allow their customers to support them.

Nobody is forcing you to read NYT, if you don't want to pay, don't read it.

(I probably won't be paying, and I disagree with this, but it is their company to do with what they please)

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

#66

Post by Locke1689 »

pierrefar wrote: post #3

>>"There’s a lot of technical work that we need to do over the next year to get this right," said Martin A. Nisenholtz. Well, duh. For one, is this cookie-based tracking? I already know how to fix that. Is it sign in tracking? I predict a surge in account sign-ups. Is it IP-based tracking? Say bye to all your AOL users and those behind proxies. Will they force users to install a browser plugin or and ActiveX control…

Why not just do it with IP address? Too annoying for most people to spoof. The few who have shared IP addresses get screwed, not really a big deal.

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

#67

Post by mattparcher »

I agree with John Gruber, who cited this tweet from Dave Winer (developer, entrepreneur, writer, and a pioneer of RSS and podcasting):

"My opinion, the NYT will never implement the paywall they talked about today. If they were going to do it, they'd just do it."

http://twitter.com/davewiner/status/7990139921

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

#68

Post by redwax »

redwax wrote: post #59

Keeping the poor uninformed is important for modern democracy.

Can anyone explain the downvotes ? Surely my point is valid even if couched in the sarcasm of devils advocacy - are sarcasm tags needed ?

A democracy cannot function without an informed public. The press has traditionally been seen as the main guarantor of keeping people informed. Creating a paywall is exclusiory to the less well off. This therefore makes the United States less democratic.

Can I please be argued with rather than downvoted or is there no such thing as netiquette these days ?

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

#69

Post by ramchip »

hexis wrote: post #27
ramchip wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually... you're right! I completely forgot that I registered on Facebook last summer :)
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