Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site

[leQ]

Source: NY Times

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

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.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/business/media/18times.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin

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all i can say it's about time.

[eleny]

1. Good news

[partylessinOhio]

2. News should be free. The internet should be and remain free too.

Bravo for the NYT!

[SoFlaJet]

3. AGREED

all it has done is make me NOT read the parts of the Times I would like to read-b/c sorry folks-I AIN'T payin'

[beltanefauve]

4. If TimesSelect was such

a success, then why are they discontinuing it?

Maybe the article explained this already, I don't know. Not being a paid subscriber, I was unable to access the link.

[bluedigger]

5. The service was a success but...

they can make more money from advertising revenue than they can from subscriptions, and with free access they can charge more to advertisers due to increased traffic. They are just maximizing their revenue stream - good business practice. I thing the internets are going to look more and more like our old broadcasting system pre-cable - you know - when TV was free and always would be. The advantage to content providers is that they don't have to rely on Nielson ratings to drive advertising prices. They have immediate feedback on hits/page.

edit for spelling

[rocktivity]

6. Hands up who DIDN'T see this coming

Cut the crap, NYT--if the project had "met expectations," it would be continuing. But why they "expected" people to pay access for their editorial in numbers large enough to be profitable is still a mystery to me. From day one, I said that charging for the news and giving the editoral away would have made SLIGHTLY more sense.

:hi:
rocknation

[Ediacara]

7. They claim that almost 30% of their readers subscribed to the orange T?

If that were true, they'd never have stopped the program.

[sarcasmo]

8. Big Mistake on the Time's part.

[dkofos]

9. Bet they still require you to accept a cookie before they let you in.

[SayWhatYo]

10. cookies ain't really evil...

[dkofos]

11. Not chocolate chip anyways.

[Carrieyazel]

12. This is the paper that invented the entire bogus Whitewater "affair"

that tormented President Clinton until the end. It won't affect me, because I never go to their site anyway. This is no longer the "paper of record" anyway. Hasn't been for a long time. The "Slimes" was huge to the neocon kooks in the run-up to the illegal war. Their ex-stenographer Judy Miller is and was despicable for supporting the Shrubbers.
So screw them.