a 'grey' lady starts giving it away

[alocispepraluger102]

New York Times to end paid Internet service

Mon Sep 17, 2007 8:37pm EDT

By Robert MacMillan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The New York Times Co said on Monday it will end its paid TimesSelect Web service and make most of its Web site available for free in the hopes of attracting more readers and higher advertising revenue.

TimesSelect will shut down on Wednesday, two years after the Times launched it, which charges subscribers $7.95 a month or $49.95 a year to read articles by columnists such as Maureen Dowd and Thomas Friedman.

The trademark orange "T's" marking premium articles will begin disappearing Tuesday night, said the Web site's Vice President and General Manager Vivian Schiller.

The move is an acknowledgment by The Times that making Web site visitors pay for content would not bring in as much money as making it available for free and supporting it with advertising.

"We now believe by opening up all our content and unleashing what will be millions and millions of new documents, combined with phenomenal growth, that that will create a revenue stream that will more than exceed the subscription revenue," Schiller said.

Figuring out how to increase online revenue is crucial to the Times and other U.S. newspaper publishers, which are struggling with a drop in advertising sales and paying subscribers as more readers move online.

"Of course, everything on the Web is free, so it's understandable why they would want to do that," said Alan Mutter a former editor at the San Francisco Chronicle and proprietor of a blog about the Internet and the news business called Reflections of a Newsosaur.

"The more page views you have, the more you can sell," he said. "In the immediate moment it's a perfectly good idea."

The longer-term problem for publishers like the Times is that they must find ways to present content online rather than just transferring stories and pictures from the newspaper.

Most U.S. news Web sites offer their contents for free, supporting themselves by selling advertising. One exception is The Wall Street Journal which runs a subscription-based Web site.

TimesSelect generated about $10 million in revenue a year. Schiller declined to project how much higher the online growth rate would be without charging visitors.

The company expects to record a "substantially increased number of unique users referred to and accessing the site" once TimesSelect disappears, it said in a statement.

TimesSelect includes online access to 23 news and opinion columnists as well as several tools to customize the Web site. It also offers access to the Times archives back to 1851.

Starting on Wednesday, access to the archives will be available for free back to 1987, and as well as stories before 1923, which are in the public domain, Schiller said.

Users can buy articles between 1923 and 1986 on their own or in 10-article packages, the company said. Some stories, such as film reviews, will be free, she said.

American Express will be the first sponsor of the opened areas on the site, and will have a "significant advertising presence" on the homepage and in the opinion and archives sections, the company said.

Schiller declined to say what the financial impact would be on the Times. No employees would lose their jobs, she said.

TimesSelect had about 227,000 paying subscribers as of August. People who receive the paper at home get access to it for free, as do students. In total, about 787,400 people have access to TimesSelect now, the company said.

The number of subscribers met the paper's expectations, Schiller said. "We consider TimesSelect very successful," she said.

Paying TimesSelect subscribers will receive a pro-rated refund on their credit cards, she added.

© Reuters 2006. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.

Reuters journalists are subject to the Reuters Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.

Edited September 18, 2007 by alocispepraluger102

[JSngry]

It's about time.

[BERIGAN]

227,000 paying customers as of August, at $7.95 a month, shouldn't that generate more than 21 Mil instead on 10 mil a year???

[alocispepraluger102]

227,000 paying customers as of August, at $7.95 a month, shouldn't that generate more than 21 Mil instead on 10 mil a year???

i wouldnt take those stats to the bank. it was probably more like 2700 paying subscribers.

[Randy Twizzle]

Users can buy articles between 1923 and 1986 on their own or in 10-article packages, the company said.

The Bergen County NJ library system that I belong to, allows access via ProQuest.umi.com to the complete run of the Times for free. All I need is my 14 digit library card number. I'm more interested in reading the Times from 1923-1986 than almost anything published by them in the last 20 years. One of the highlights of my scatter shot Times reading was finding my Grandfather listed in a list of debtors being taken to court by a creditor in the middle of the depression. Roots baby!

[alocispepraluger102]

Users can buy articles between 1923 and 1986 on their own or in 10-article packages, the company said.

The Bergen County NJ library system that I belong to, allows access via ProQuest.umi.com to the complete run of the Times for free. All I need is my 14 digit library card number. I'm more interested in reading the Times from 1923-1986 than almost anything published by them in the last 20 years. One of the highlights of my scatter shot Times reading was finding my Grandfather listed in a list of debtors being taken to court by a creditor in the middle of the depression. Roots baby!

digging in old old newspapers is one of life's great pleasures

[Jazzmoose]

digging in old old newspapers is one of life's great pleasures

I'll say! There's nothing quite like it.

As for the topic of the thread, all I can say is "welcome back to my bookmarks, Times". I can't complain too much, though. It's not like their business end screws up more than the news end...

[Free For All]

digging in old old newspapers is one of life's great pleasures

You dig?

[alocispepraluger102]

digging in old old newspapers is one of life's great pleasures

You dig?

my cats do!

Edited September 18, 2007 by alocispepraluger102

[Christiern]

This is good news for me since I only posted the op-eds for the benefit of those who otherwise would miss them.

[Johnny E]

Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site

By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

Published: September 18, 2007

The New York Times will stop charging for access to parts of its Web site, effective at midnight tonight.

The move comes two years to the day after The Times began the subscription program, TimesSelect, which has charged $49.95 a year, or $7.95 a month, for online access to the work of its columnists and to the newspaper’s archives. TimesSelect has been free to print subscribers to The Times and to some students and educators.

In addition to opening the entire site to all readers, The Times will also make available its archives from 1987 to the present without charge, as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the public domain. There will be charges for some material from the period 1923 to 1986, and some will be free.

The Times said the project had met expectations, drawing 227,000 paying subscribers — out of 787,000 over all — and generating about $10 million a year in revenue.

“But our projections for growth on that paid subscriber base were low, compared to the growth of online advertising,” said Vivian L. Schiller, senior vice president and general manager of the site, NYTimes.com.

What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.

“What wasn’t anticipated was the explosion in how much of our traffic would be generated by Google, by Yahoo and some others,” Ms. Schiller said.

The Times’s site has about 13 million unique visitors each month, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, far more than any other newspaper site. Ms. Schiller would not say how much increased Web traffic the paper expects by eliminating the charges, or how much additional ad revenue the move was expected to generate.

Those who have paid in advance for access to TimesSelect will be reimbursed on a prorated basis.

Colby Atwood, president of Borrell Associates, a media research firm, said that there have always been reasons to question the pay model for news sites, and that doubts have grown along with Web traffic and online ad revenue.

“The business model for advertising revenue, versus subscriber revenue, is so much more attractive,” he said. “The hybrid model has some potential, but in the long run, the advertising side will dominate.”

In addition, he said, The Times has been especially effective at using information it collects about its online readers to aim ads specifically to them, increasing their value to advertisers.

Many readers lamented their loss of access to the work of the 23 news and opinion columnists of The Times — as did some of the columnists themselves. Some of those writers have such ardent followings that even with access restricted, their work often appeared on the lists of the most e-mailed articles.

Experts say that opinion columns are unlikely to generate much ad revenue, but that they can drive a lot of reader traffic to other, more lucrative parts of The Times site, like topic pages devoted to health and technology.

The Wall Street Journal, published by Dow Jones & Company, is the only major newspaper in the country to charge for access to most of its Web site, which it began doing in 1996. The Journal has nearly one million paying online readers, generating about $65 million in revenue.

Dow Jones and the company that is about to take it over, the News Corporation, are discussing whether to continue that practice, according to people briefed on those talks. Rupert Murdoch, the News Corporation chairman, has talked of the possibility of making access to The Journal free online.

The Financial Times charges for access to selected material online, much as The New York Times has.

The Los Angeles Times tried that model in 2005, charging for access to its arts section, but quickly dropped it after experiencing a sharp decline in Web traffic.

[Harold_Z]

Definitely good news!

I paid for two years.......it was worth it for me.

[Johnny E]

Definitely good news!

I paid for two years.......it was worth it for me.

Couldn't afford it but i sure did miss it.

[catesta]

Glad to see this will move free up some of the archives.

[Harold_Z]

Definitely good news!

I paid for two years.......it was worth it for me.

Couldn't afford it but i sure did miss it.

I didn't dig paying, but I couldn't miss Krugman or Rich. What really bugged me, tho, was that the Crossword puzzle wasn't included in the price of the subscription.

[kinuta]

Great news .

Now I can read Maureen Dowd without waiting for someone to post her articles.

[Kalo]

The Times, it are a'changin'...

[Kalo]

This is good news for me since I only posted the op-eds for the benefit of those who otherwise would miss them.

Appreciated!

[Jazzmoose]

Great news .

Now I can read Maureen Dowd without waiting for someone to post her articles.

Uh...yeah. Substitute "Krugman" for "Dowd", and I agree with you!

[Jazzmoose]

This is good news for me since I only posted the op-eds for the benefit of those who otherwise would miss them.

Appreciated!

Yes, it most definitely was! Thanks a million, Chris.

[Dan Gould]

Refused to pay, and the only thing "missing" was the odd sports column I might wanted to have read. Not being able to read the Op-Ed page cut down on the time I spent with the paper in the AM, and believe me, there's no reason to start up again now.

But I knew they'd eventually drop the pay for content scheme.

[Kalo]

Refused to pay, and the only thing "missing" was the odd sports column I might wanted to have read. Not being able to read the Op-Ed page cut down on the time I spent with the paper in the AM, and believe me, there's no reason to start up again now.

But I knew they'd eventually drop the pay for content scheme.

Seemed obvious to me that if you made your content (immediate opinion) scarce, the value of said content would plummet rather than soar.

It's not like this is fine wine, folks.

Rejoin the dialogue, NYT.

[BruceH]

Great news .

Now I can read Maureen Dowd without waiting for someone to post her articles.

Uh...yeah. Substitute "Krugman" for "Dowd", and I agree with you!

Hear hear!! (Or is it "Here here"?) In any case,---vehement agreement!