Credit: Tony Cenicola/The New York Times
Until recently, The New York Times shared virtually all of its content for free, in a program called TimesSelect. That's about to change, as The Times switches to a "metered" model of charging its most frequent readers:
All visitors to NYTimes.com will have full access to the home page. In addition, readers will be able to read individual articles through search sites like Google, Yahoo and Bing without charge. After that first article, though, clicking on subsequent ones will count toward the monthly limit. Among the nation’s largest newspapers, only The Wall Street Journal and Newsday charge for access to major portions of their Web sites. A few smaller ones also do, including The Financial Times, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and The Albuquerque Journal, and more are expected to join their ranks this year.
Today, The Times posted a Q&A with Janet L. Robinson, president and chief executive of the company, and Martin A. Nisenholtz, senior vice president for digital operations, about the model is its implications for readers and journalism. Shareable highlights:
Q. I just wonder, if charging people to view articles didn’t work a few years ago, why do they think it will work this time? — Kajikit, FL
A. We learned a lot from our earlier version of a pay model, TimesSelect. We learned, for example, that people will pay for content online, particularly for a robust package of high quality Times content. We also learned that you have to carefully weigh the benefits of an advertising and a subscription model. And we learned that many NYTimes.com users believe what differentiates us is our journalism, the depth and breadth of our reporting and analysis.
Also there have been many developments in the online space since we took down TimesSelect. The tools and technologies that enable frictionless commerce have improved dramatically and fallen in price. We believe our customers are ready for this new model. Services like iTunes have paved the way for users to pay for digital content. And based on our research we now believe that a significant number of our best customers are willing to pay for access to the entire Web site, if they are not getting it free as a benefit of subscribing to the newspaper.
Q. What about posting articles to Facebook and other social media? Would friends without a subscription then not be able to view an article that I think is relevant for them? — Julie, Pinole CA
A. Yes, they could continue to view articles. If you are coming to NYTimes.com from another Web site and it brings you to our site to view an article, you will have access to that article and it will not count toward your allotment of free ones.
To me, this is an interesting and promising model. It makes most of the news shareable and available for free, as a public service, while at the same time charging professional and amateur news junkies--people like me. The plan responds to the imperatives of technological sharing while still asking its core of readers to support the news-gathering on which they rely.
As I read the Q&A, I recalled a conversation I once had with a cabbie--in fact, she was taking me to interview for the job I now hold as editor of this site. During the ride, I mentioned that I read The Times online.
"What?!" she cried, instantly enraged. "People like you are destroying journalism!"
"Why?"
She started waving around a rolled-up copy of The San Francisco Chronicle, from which many friends had recently been laid off.
"Because you're not paying for it!"
"Well, you know, I am a journalist. In fact, I'm getting laid off this month, and you're driving me to a job interview right now."
She got quiet.
"Well, people should pay for the news. We need the news. You should have a job!"
"I agree. But you know, journalists are the biggest consumers of free news, and the biggest sharers of news. That's why we can't go back; everyone knows have to figure out a new way to pay for news media."
I probably don't need to belabor the multiple levels of irony in this conversation. My point is this: It makes sense to me to charge people like me for reading The Times--or to be more exact, to charge my employer--while making it free to most of the public.
What do you think? Would you pay for The New York Times? Will your employer? What about your city paper--would you pay for that? Do you think this model will be widely adopted--or fade into obscurity, like so many other brave new business models before it?
Comments
Regan wrote on 01.21.10, 7:32pm:
It will be hard to get Web surfers and news junkies used to free content to convert to paying for content. They resisted before, and the newspaper websites backed off. But if it will save newspapers, and high-quality professional journalism, I'm all for it. And the Times guy's point about a changed landscape is a good one: iTunes has taught Internet users to pay for content they desire.
We have to go by lots of new rules now-- like paying for seat licenses for the privilege of buying season tickets at the ballpark. I wish it were not so, but once a shift happens, the public has little choice but to go along. We used to get double features at the movies for one ticket price. Then we got only one movie and the tickets have continued to go sky high. One can boycott institutions that change their ways of doing business, but it could mean giving up a service or product you want, need and/or enjoy.
In the case of journalism, somebody needs to pay for journalists' salaries and the general costs of news gathering, production and distribution, and if advertising doesn't cover them anymore, maybe user fees can help.
S E Garrett wrote on 01.22.10, 1:40am:
I was having a similar debate with friends recently. We were discussing which free websites we would actually pay for, and how much we would pay for them. There weren't many.
For me, the two that stand out are the BBC (UK) and wikipedia.
I do use the other major UK news websites such as timesonline, but not enough. If I had the BBC I could do without timesonline.
Because I am assured of the breadth, depth and reliability of the data in these system, I'd probably pay quite a lot to hang onto them if I had to, maybe £100/year ($150/year).
The problem for the websites is giving you free access for long enough to be hooked sufficiently that you would pay this much.
Jeremy Adam Smith wrote on 01.23.10, 7:19am:
There's also an interesting discussion going on about this topic on Shareable's Facebook page. Some of the comments there are informed by another perspective: That "news" will evolve into something created by ordinary people on the site of the event, uploading pictures and words onto social media sites, which will then be distributed by social networks and by sites that specialize in synthesizing, aggregating, ranking. Blogs are the new op-ed pages; editors are replaced by the collective that is ranking and sharing content up the stream. There's no need to for a new business model to support journalism because they are no journalists to pay. It's a totally different paradigm--and from that perspective, The Times is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Do I personally believe in this new paradigm? I think it's inevitable; you can see it in formation all around us. New animals have been introduced into the media ecology, and the native creatures are scrambling around to find new niches; some of the original inhabitants will go extinct.
But I don't believe that institutions like The Times will go away, and I don't think they should go away: There will still be a place for trained, professional news gatherers and their editors, although (as is already the case) they will largely succeed or fail based on their ability to harness the wisdom of crowds. And new forms will emerge to compete: alliances of people who would once have been called stringers, collectives who work together to monetize the content they create.
It may be that the business model journalism is looking for has nothing at all to do with supporting big institutions like The Times, and more to do with supporting the individual journalist--it is the individuals who need a business model, so that they have the time and incentive to refine their skills and advance their "brand." Will that produce better journalism? I'm not sure. I do know that it will take time for mechanisms to evolve to screen out inaccurate or deceptive reporting; we're still in a transitional period, and no matter what happens in the future, in the near-term, we're still going to need the work of professional journalists. From that perspective, keeping newspapers on life support for just a little bit longer is something that must be done.
Jeremy Adam Smith
www.jeremyadamsmith.com
Susan Mernit wrote on 01.24.10, 1:03pm:
I don't want to pay, but if the price was reasonable, I would--and I probably will. I pay for Pandora, flickr, Basecamp and other tools I use and value--so how could I not play the Times a "reasonable" amount?
In other words, I think old (read expensive) subscription models are doomed, but smaller payments and annual payments have had success in the tech world and could cross over--and work.
Eve wrote on 01.28.10, 1:02pm:
I think it is harder to justify charging for news when you're also running a ton of ads alongside the content.
Also, while I read Nytimes.com all the time (it is my homepage) and totally value the content, I think it will be a hard sell to start charging for something that is currently free (especially when there is lots of other free news out there, even if it's not the times.)
I never paid for any of their premium content when they were charging for it and was surprised that they resurrected this idea after they'd dropped the premium content a while back (which I assumed they did because most people felt like I did, that it was not quite worth having to pay for that content.)
That said, the demise of journalism is a huge problem! I'm just not sure this is the best way to solve it.
seslisohbet wrote on 06.23.10, 5:24am:
I was having a similar debate with friends recently. We were discussing which free websites we would actually pay for, and how much we would pay for them. There weren't many.
For me, the two that stand out are the BBC (UK) and wikipedia.
I do use the other major UK news websites such as timesonline, but not enough. If I had the BBC I could do without timesonline.
Yes I would pay to read the New York Times online, and so would my likely employers, and my wife's (education and finance) as they already do with it and other periodicals.
However, since I/we already do pay to have the New York Times delivered hardcopy, as well as our local paper, the Chicago Tribune, I wonder what kind of arrangement will be made for us.
In any case, the model makes perfect sense and probably should have come along earlier. I'm a big fan of user fees. People who really want quality news -- be it the NYT, The Economist, the Financial Times or the WSJ -- will pay for it, thus helping to keep these important institutions afloat.
Perhaps the historical phase of free online news -- which has existed for only about 10 years or so -- will come to be seen as a historical anomaly. Before that brief window, you either paid for a paper or you didn't read the news. Going forward, you'll probably either pay to read online, or not read the news. I'm not sure which is better for democracy or for sharing, but at least this way we stand a chance of preserving a core of professional journalism.