i read the times. i do not pay for the times.
so i got a fun little announcement in my inbox yesterday. the new york times is switching to a paid subscription model for their online content. kind of. the gist of it is, you can read 20 articles a month for free, but after that you can only read additional articles if you’re a paid digital subscriber. and by “articles,” of course they mean real articles as well as slideshows, videos, and other features. but if you’re old-school and still get the paper paper, then all the digital stuff is still free. and the “top news” section on smartphone/tablet apps will still be free, but you gots to pay for all the rest, like those ceaselessly insightful david brooks columns. there’s also a weird loophole that lets you read anything that you come to via a social network (like a link on twitter). it’s like the times totally wants to make out with you, but is really too embarrassed to actually put the moves on ya’. it’s interesting. but i’m not sure it’s gonna work.
i love reading the times on my android phone. if i’m standing in line at the grocery for even like 45 seconds, i whip that thing out & scan the headlines. so i’ll probably get on board with this plan. maybe. after i get a real job. it’ll be $15/month for web & phone access. but will everyone else pony up after being conditioned to expect free shit for so many years? the thing that the times has going in its favor, at least for me, is that my other favorite newspaper, the chicago tribune, has a mobile site that looks like it was designed by the editor’s nephew 12 years ago (after little timmy took an HTML course in college). anyway, you can read more about the digital plans at nytimes.com/access, or check out their faq.
hilariously, the times is testing this model first, right now, on canucks before the rest of the world gets hit with it on march 28. our poor neighbors to the north just can’t get any respect, can they?
[...] And so this recent NYT editorial by Susan Freinkel was right in my wheelhouse. “Plastic has become synonymous with cheap and worthless,” she writes, “when in fact those chains of hydrocarbons ought to be regarded as among the most valuable substances on the planet. If we understood plastic’s true worth, we would stop wasting it on trivial throwaways and take better advantage of what this versatile material can do for us.” It’s smart and well-argued, and you should read it now before you have to pay for it. [...]
I hate to admit it, but even after five years of working in journalism – and having watched a number of friends and colleagues lose their jobs as a result of declining revenue – I still balk at the idea of paying to read the news. I’d prefer not to think it’s because I’m cheap, or just a horribly insensitive person, but rather because since I’ve been of regular news reading age, it’s always been free. So, in my mind, and by extension I assume the minds of everyone else in our generation, news is just something that ought to be free. And so I have a hard time imagining myself jumping on board to pay a subscription to the New York Times. Because even though I love the New York Times, I also love BBC’s online content, The Seattle Times, etc. So I’m probably just gonna keep reading the free stuff. This is a discussion that’s been going on for years in the news world – should we make people pay for online content? And the answer is often times no, with the rational that it doesn’t work unless EVERY publication does it for exactly the reason I’ve mentioned above. People are just going to go somewhere else to read for free. Of course, NYT has a large and loyal fan base, so if anyone can make a go of it, it’s probably them.
I think Leyna is right that many people may just go elsewhere, but I also think that many of the other major news outlets have just been waiting for NYT to do it. They’ve been talking about it for a while and we knew it was coming, so I would bet that others follow suit, just with different terms, depending on what works for the Times and what doesn’t. Who knows though. It seems like a smart move to do it now. Not only are more people conditioned to buy online content, whether it’s for music or e-books or apps, but the decision to let people access links shared via FB and Twitter, no matter what, seems obvious but sort of brilliant at the same time. I would expect some clueless executive to nix the idea, but I’m glad they didn’t. I wonder if the biggest benefactor of people not wanting to pay might be HuffPost, but then again, it seems like a quarter of their posts are “Headline + 2 sentences + link to NYT article.” So maybe they’ll have to spend time quoting and summarizing rather than just linking. I guess we’ll see. I think I’ll end up paying for the NYT, depending on how fast I go through 20 articles, but then I think, “What if ESPN only let me read 20 articles a month?” and before I finished typing “ESPN” I could tell you I’d lay down whatever they wanted per month. No matter how angry I’d be about it, it would still be worth it to me. I think there are enough people who are like that with the Times, especially if other sites try to make their content subscription-only as well. Nobody tell ESPN, though.
The Times tried to do this (with a different pay structure) maybe 3 years ago and it failed. I didn’t pay. This time I might.
I feel guilty for not reading the news more carefully. I feel guilty when I subscribe and use all that paper. I feel guilty when I read for free and the newspapers are falling apart. Truth be told, I want to subscribe. But I am afraid my mornings would all go to reading the paper (at the expense of writing and preparing for my classes). Or that I will keep on writing and preparing for my classes (actually the more likely scenario) and then the paper will pile up and my apartment will become a tree cemetery.
Oh, but I love reading the NYT and it’s so much better on inky, pulpy paper.