22 January 2010

Times in 2011: Pay Up!

Not book-specific, but since I link to them constantly, the New York Times announced this week that it will begin charging readers for access to its website in 2011, giving visitors a limited number of articles to read for free before locking up. Of course we all remember the Times instituted a paywall for some of its content under the name "TimesSelect" a few years ago and that was widely regarded as a failure, but maybe it didn't fail big enough?

I think it's a bad idea but I would probably pay, not so much for news as that for features and reporting, I have not found anything close. Obviously I read the headlines every morning and have since before I moved here, but that's not all of it. The Times can make me care about laundromat regulars in Brooklyn and an orchestra strike in Cleveland and what kinds of dogs are bad for running with and the origins of the term "guido" and... you get the picture. Even when I'm making fun of the Paper of Record, it's still Of Record.

I guess the folks in charge are banking on the fact that people like me will grudgingly fork over when the time comes. And then there's the question of how much the decision makers at the Times believe access to be worth, versus how much consumers are willing to pay. I don't pay for any other subscription sites like Salon, so that's a leap for me. (Hulu is going through this process as well, and it's difficult to say which will occasion the greater hue and cry when it starts collecting. Just kidding, it's totally going to be Hulu. Chris Anderson would say, Free wants to stay home from work and watch "High School High" and "Beverly Hills Cop III," proving that Free has bad taste in junk film.)

At the same time, if I'm behind the pay wall and you're not, how can we have a conversation about the content of the paper? If I send you an article and you've exceeded your quota, do I have to settle for describing the article to you. Or do I screencap it and send it to you anyway... ahem. As one could potentially do. That's where I think this decision verges on the illogical -- we're not making enough online ad revenue off our stories, so the solution is to ensure even fewer readers see them? But I'm not privy to their financials so maybe this works on paper. (No pun intended.)

Would you consider paying to read the Times if you don't already?

3 comments:

Elizabeth said...

I want to do my part to support the newspaper industry: that's why I bought a subscription to the Baltimore Sun even though I can read it online for free. (But apparently my help is insufficient support to hire a copy editor: yesterday's headline read "Ethics changes outlined for city: Rawlings-Blake says her bill will seek to heighte public trus'".)

So, because I recognize the value that the New York Times adds to my life, I will probably pay to use it, as I occasionally contribute to my local public radio station. But, unlike with my local radio station, now every time I am tempted to click on an article, I will probably stop to think, is this article really worth the cash to read it? and I will probably read less as a result.

It's a real problem: charging per article will mean that fewer people will read the newspaper. But if there's a better way for a newspaper to solvent, no one's figured it out yet. And we need newspapers.

Wade Garrett said...

I too feel a bit of a moral obligation to support newspapers. My parents subscribe to The Buffalo News, though they can read it online and complain that too many of the stories are from newswires. I'm not home enough to read the newspaper, so it would literally be throwing money away. So I give that money to NPR to allay my guilt.

Milissa said...

Oh this makes me so sad. I would NOT pay. Unless I absolutely had to...for example, I'm not in school...but if I was and needed to quote something out of a specific article for a research paper, I would pay...otherwise, I would try to find the content on some other "free" source.

My boyfriend keeps telling me that we will possibly see multiple newpapers fail because of the internet and I get upset with him and tell him to HUSH. (I heart real newspapers...but I don't live in NY and I like to buy local...so I buy the local Sunday paper every week.) He also tells me he thinks that may happen with libraries...and that is just a nightmare of a thought to me.