New York Times Plans to Charge for Articles
Filed under: Articles, Internet, News, Online Business Author: internetbiz
NY Times Building
The New York Times says it will start charging for online content next year, dropping a big shoe in the debate over whether newspapers should — and can — get paid for something they’ve been giving away for free for years. Instead, it plans to offer a certain number of articles for free before charging a monthly price.
“This is a bet, to a certain degree, on where we think the web is going,” said Times chairman and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. in an internal memo sent to employees. “This is not going to be something that is going to change the financial dynamics overnight.”
Speaking of those financial dynamics, the Times needs this plan to work — as does, arguably, the rest of the newspaper industry, which has been crushed by debt from financial restructuring, the recession, a weak ad market and intense competition from the same online medium this plan hopes to embrace. The Times‘ cash flow appears to be fine for the moment, although its new 52-story Manhattan high-rise and a stock price that lost about 75 percent of its value over the past five years surely pressured it to make the internet — quite literally– pay.
Sulzberger placed his bet that enough readers will sign up for the service to justify losing some of its industry-leading 17 million readers per month. Whether it succeeds depends in part on where he sets the free-reading limit and the price of a subscription.
Times executives wouldn’t divulge either figure, even to its own reporters, but this metered approach is modeled somewhat on that of the Financial Times, which imposes a limit of 10 free articles per month then charges over $18 for a monthly subscription. The New York Times, which will continue to be free to print subscribers, will likely charge much less. When polling its readers whether they’d pay for unlimited online access, it mentioned a price of $5 per month. That represents a bargain compared to the Financial Times, but will Times readers pay $5 a month to read unlimited articles online? Music services MOG and Napster charge the same price for millions of songs and haven’t gained much traction.
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