Tue May 12, 2009 1:55PM EDT
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Rupert Murdoch, what hath thou wrought?
After floating the idea that the rest of his publishing empire could follow in the footsteps of the Wall Street Journal and begin charging for content, now the venerable New York Times thinks it might be able to get in on the act... again.
To be sure, the Times has been savaged by the economy in recent years (its stock is down about 90 percent since 2003), but is erecting a pay wall to one of the world's most venerable brands -- a second time -- a wise idea? The Times already tried walling off certain parts of its website (namely archives and opinion columns) through the so-called TimesSelect service. But that experiment was essentially a failure (despite receiving nearly half a million subscribers) and the Times re-opened its entire website to everyone in late 2007.
Yet that may change again in the near future.
In a meeting with shareholders (as reported via Twitter by a Times staff writer), the company is now said to be "exploring a new online financial strategy" that could introduce membership levels that gives users varying levels of access to the website, explores new ways to penalize thieves who reprint the newspaper's content without permission, and develops ways to dramatically increase traffic to the website and thus increase advertising revenues along the way.
The really interesting thing here is how the Times has come to reflect on TimesSelect nearly two years after the fact: As the Guardian notes, the implication from the corporate brass is not that the service was a failure on its own merits, but because it wasn't positioned properly from a marketing perspective and thus received a lot of bad publicity. Could the Times really be planning to give TimesSelect a second try? And would consumers really give that a second chance?
Join in the discussion. Here you'll see the comments in the order they were posted.
I would like to see micro payments for articles (25 cents for a Dowd article, 50cents to unlock all barcelona articles for a half hour, etc)...
Why pay when whatever is reported in the NYT's is reported else-where for free?
The New York Times should spend less time working on a financial strategy and spend more time on a reporting strategy. Their credibility stinks, their reporting is biased, and almost every word they print comes with an agenda. The Wall Street Journal is an example of an informative resource that tackles complex financial and political topics without the biased agenda. Who wants to pay for crap that can be gotten for free on any main street media channel or on a hundred other internet web sites.
Greeeeed!
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1 Posted by magpagbst on Tue May 12, 2009 8:16PM EDT Report Abuse
. . . good luck "new york times" . . . there is nothing in your paper that can't be had for free at "the huffington post" . . .