NYTimes.com's Plan To Charge People Money For Consuming Goods, Services Called Bold Business Move

“In a move that media executives, economic forecasters, and business analysts alike are calling "extremely bold," NYTimes.com put into place a groundbreaking new business model today in which the news website will charge people money to consume the goods and services it provides. "The whole idea of an American business trying to make a profit off of a product its hired professionals create on a daily basis is a truly brave and intrepid strategy," said media analyst Steve Messner... ”

The following might sound like i want it and i want it for free. But this is really not the case. In my opinion this Mr. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger suffers from loss of reality. I don't know, it might be that US cinema tickets are that expensive, 35 Dollars for 1 month, which is the payment-plan for all access subscribers. For iPad it's 20 and for Smartphone 15 Dollars. Considering that they have no additional cost for printing and delivery, this is a total rip-off, if anything. They just copy the articles and distribute them digitally across the world.

At least they don't charge their home delivery subscribers any extras for accessing all online content. They pay 11,70 per week, for 4 weeks this adds up to 46,80 Dollars, after the trial subscription ends, totaling around 520 Dollars per year. Name one newspaper that is worth to spend that much money to subscribe on/offline. I don't know of any.

*face palm*

*whoosh*

"called bold" more like "called stupid", this is going to fall flat just like every other subscription news service - there are just way too many free alternatives for this to attract enough consumers.

Nagareboshi Wrote:The following might sound like i want it and i want it for free. But this is really not the case. In my opinion this Mr. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger suffers from loss of reality. I don't know, it might be that US cinema tickets are that expensive, 35 Dollars for 1 month, which is the payment-plan for all access subscribers. For iPad it's 20 and for Smartphone 15 Dollars. Considering that they have no additional cost for printing and delivery, this is a total rip-off, if anything. They just copy the articles and distribute them digitally across the world.

At least they don't charge their home delivery subscribers any extras for accessing all online content. They pay 11,70 per week, for 4 weeks this adds up to 46,80 Dollars, after the trial subscription ends, totaling around 520 Dollars per year. Name one newspaper that is worth to spend that much money to subscribe on/offline. I don't know of any.

I share many similar sentiments, and not only for the NYT but the publishing industry as a whole.

The two most expensive costs of publishing are printing and shipping. Electronic formats almost completely eliminate both of these costs - printing is replaced by servers and shipping by bandwidth. This huge reduction in the production and shipping costs should translate into reduced prices. However, such a reduction has yet to take place.

It's quite obvious that the publishing industry is desperately clinging to their old business model like how the music industry clung to theirs in the midst of Napster. And at this point, I think all of us watching already know it's only a matter of time until publishing must recognize that paper is dying.

zachandhobbes Wrote:"called bold" more like "called stupid", this is going to fall flat just like every other subscription news service - there are just way too many free alternatives for this to attract enough consumers.

Or highway robbery.

vileru Wrote:I share many similar sentiments, and not only for the NYT but the publishing industry as a whole.

The two most expensive costs of publishing are printing and shipping. Electronic formats almost completely eliminate both of these costs - printing is replaced by servers and shipping by bandwidth. This huge reduction in the production and shipping costs should translate into reduced prices. However, such a reduction has yet to take place.

It's quite obvious that the publishing industry is desperately clinging to their old business model like how the music industry clung to theirs in the midst of Napster. And at this point, I think all of us watching already know it's only a matter of time until publishing must recognize that paper is dying.

The situation is really similar to that of the music business. They did not make their moves fast enough to be competitive, and now they suffer losses, and blame those downloading it for free. With a similar model like iTunes this wouldn't have happened. Selling single pieces of music for a reasonable price became common after a long time. I also daresay just in time, before loosing the game, against the free copies swarming through torrents and sharing sites.

But this over prized printing vs. digital distribution model really is greed and nothing more. (As has been said already) It is the same with e-books, or software that get's sold digitally, no cost for material, no pressing on DVD, just development and pay-checks for the developers. Contrary to online newspapers this has some value, but not hundreds of dollars, like the paperback copy. And the readers have no benefit of it either, there is no reselling allowed policies, nor are there any possibilities to do so. (Not sure with music, i guess this is possible there.) But this could also be solved, to distribute the DRM to the new owner, so that the music is not playable anymore, for the original owner.

All it takes is a decent price and the people will buy. The distributor wont this idea, because he want's to see big dollars, at the end of the month. Horace once said: “He who is greedy is always in want.” And it is true here, seeing only how much more one could get, instead of seeing how a little less would earn more, is nearsighted. All it takes are ideas, to make something sell big time, greed does not get you anywhere. ;-)

It's still cheaper than the online subscription for the Financial Times.

Honestly speaking, I think it's OK. I subscribe to the Financial Times online, using it through their extremely well designed IPad App. I think it's worth it, in particular when you're traveling a lot. If it wasn't for the traveling I'd still go for the paper version though.

I haven't checked NYT online services, but I'd assume that there's much less advertising than in their paper version, isn't it? Somehow they have to generate alternative income streams. I support it, I'd hate to see serious journalism disappearing as a consequence of a lack of working business models.

while I hate that it's going to become a pay-service, I recognize that there are immense costs involved with producing the NYtimes. It isnt just printing. You still need a building, employees, multiple offices, and huge travel budgets etc.

Please stop comparing it to the music industry, it's an entirely different situation. Firstly the habits that people have regarding news and music are entirely different. Music has a much longer shelf life (75years I think), while much of the old news loses it's value soon after it is made available. News has to be constantly churned out to stay relevant. So, lets forget about the itunes comparison.

The music industry also doesn't have the problems that many papers have where "feeders" like the huffingtonpost constantly re-post reporting and take away viewership. The nytimes is the most widely read american newspaper, yet hardly makes a profit. It only makes sense that they want to try to bring in additional revenue sources. It is not a readily replaceable paper (they are keenly aware of this) and as such people who are really into it, should (and will)pay for it. User fees are nothing all that new.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_onion

Yea, but don't you feel strange duder that you are paying the NYTimes huge fees for public news? I mean yea every once in a while, they will have a story that you can't find anywhere else (well, for 10 minutse or so before everyone copies it) and yes, they do have a pretty fancy site with nice writers, but is it really worth paying that much money when you can, 99% of the time, find the exact same news in other places?

I agree - it's not like music at all because it's not even their intellectual property (well, their writing is, but the actual news isn't), so lots of other people can write the exact same stories... and will, for free.

Back when things were paper printed 100% and there was no internet, this made sense because the fastest way to get news was through the paper so whoever could 'break' the story the soonest with best reporting would be the ones you would buy. Nowadays all it takes is a quick read of your competitor and you have a story.

I'm not saying that's what happens but, I could imagine the that the disparaging effect of one news site breaking a major story before the other is not nearly as big of a dealbreaker nowadays.

duder Wrote:Please stop comparing it to the music industry, it's an entirely different situation. Firstly the habits that people have regarding news and music are entirely different. Music has a much longer shelf life (75years I think), while much of the old news loses it's value soon after it is made available. News has to be constantly churned out to stay relevant. So, lets forget about the itunes comparison.

No, because it is pretty much the same problem, even though the businesses are different. Change CD, music cassette, record to mp3 and digital distribution, and you have both in the same situation. Both want, or need, to break into the digital market. The music industry has to produce their videos, they have their recording studios, and they have their distribution channels. Be it classic media like TV, magazines, or iTunes, where they are trying to reach the customers. They also have to send their personnel around the globe, their singers, actors, writers and what not.

Both are short lived businesses as well, news, or music style, what's hot today, is old tomorrow, and vanishes the day thereafter. However, old news keep their value, even hundreds of years later. Why else would the NY Times keep an archive, although not free of charge, online? The "news" you can view there are dating back to as far as the early 1800's.

The newspaper business sees a chance to add some income from the digital consumers. As does the music industry, with their mp3, and online shops. The situation is no different for both there either. The music industry has to keep their record studio personnel, the newspaper it's news writers, the advertising, the distribution, all that happens in both worlds. The only thing that has changed is, that songs cost a mere 50ct and an album hardly 3 dollars or more.

duder Wrote:The music industry also doesn't have the problems that many papers have where "feeders" like the huffingtonpost constantly re-post reporting and take away viewership. The nytimes is the most widely read american newspaper, yet hardly makes a profit. It only makes sense that they want to try to bring in additional revenue sources. It is not a readily replaceable paper (they are keenly aware of this) and as such people who are really into it, should (and will)pay for it. User fees are nothing all that new.

The newspaper, in this case the NY times, is not there yet. They want to rip as much money as they can, with less effort on distribution, and forget about their customers, so it seems. If they don't earn enough money, than it is because the people can't afford to buy it, because they suffer a loss. As i said before, if they would sell this e-paper for a little less, almost everyone can access it, and pay for the service. And because you are mentioning rippers, that distribute news from other websites, stealing clicks from the original source, look at youtube, where is the difference? If, let's say, Warner is publishing a song, and the next thing is, a tuber comes along, saves it, and shares it on youtube, you have the same thing happening.

And finally both the music as well as the newspaper businesses are ridden by greed, see the lawsuit, where some publisher in the music industry were suing Napster or someone else, for some multi billion dollars! Greed is the best way to loose ones customers, and in that, the music industry is big. And that is the only difference there really exists.

it depends, doesn't it. On the one hand, these businesses are definately going to have to find some good business model to be able to continue. I don't know how much advertising brings them...

What newspapers have over the music industry is that people will pay for a particular voice. When people go to a newsagent, they don't pick up any old paper, they want the one they trust, or can laugh at, or one with the page 3 girls, or the one that often has articles about the thing they're into, or, or, or, etc. It depends if they can transfer that online, doesn't it...

If all you're interested in is the headlines, well, you have always been able to go to a shop and look at them...

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I wouldn't mind paying for online magazines. The problem is even today there are no equivalents to paper magazines. Most news sites have super tiny images which annoy the hell out of me, really bad galleries that you have to reload the entire page every frickin' time you want to go forward/backward. Much more "noise" content, etc. Even the advertisement are worse, because in a A4 magazine some ads can be nice to look at or even to strip out or make paper collages or whatever. Online ads are just invasive and distracting.

But another big problem I have with online news and content providers is that I can't think of one site that I go for articles on a regular basis. I read articles from many different sources, so I honestly can't think of any content site right now that would be worth paying a subscription for. Even those sites I visit regularly I only read one article out of five or so...

It would be nice if we all "crowd source" and we all, the people, choose to pay the artists and writers directly and so on. But you still need curated sources that give a chance for everyone to be seen. Without centralized stores like iTunes it is easy to sing the praises of Radiohead or Nine Inch Nails giving away album for choose-your-own-price, but so many talented artists that are less known aren't going to be able to make a living from "crowdsourced" payments.

I don't know what's the solution, but it certainly isn't free for all. There must be a "middle way" somewhere.

1. I think some of y'all should reexamine the tone and source of the original article.

2. I'm sure NYtimes have calculated that they can make money this way, and if they don't they don't really lose anything from having tried. There will be people willing to pay extra for the news just as there are still people happy to shop at Prada, Gucci et al despite the existence of Uniclo, Zara, Gap and so on offering 95% the same quality for a fraction of the price. There are a range of business models. You can price high and sell to a lower number of people, or you can price lower and sell to a larger number. If there was an itunes store style interface in place which could be used to browse quality articles at convenience, completely free of ads for a small fee then I could see that being economically viable.

The paywall isn't hard to bypass though...

I think they're getting desperate.At my college, they have spots all over campus where one can pick up a free New York Times or USA Today, because of their "College Readership Program", but half of the papers usually don't get taken. I guess they're trying to get college students hooked on newspapers, but it's not working.

Nothing more funny than reading the comments of people who haven't heard of The Onion.

As for the business strategy, couldn't care less seeing as I don't read the NYT.

loool i didn't even look at the link, so had no idea it was the onion...

Oh, it was The Onion? LOL, I should have looked at the source! Was this an early April Fools trick or something?

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nadiatims Wrote:I think some of y'all should reexamine the tone and source of the original article.

What's to re-examine? The NY Times paywall is a hot topic lately. As for the satire, it is fairly accurate.

That was just directed at the people who didn't pick up on the satire and realise it was a parody.

thecite Wrote:Nothing more funny than reading the comments of people who haven't heard of The Onion.

What's funny? NYT is looking to start charging for their services, so all the comments in this thread are completely relevant. If people here had flipped out about the "opinions" expressed in the article, then you could say they've been punk'd, but nobody really did that.

It's true:

"Access to the newspaper’s online content is through a metered paywall. Heavy users (over 20 articles per month) have to purchase digital subscriptions, but access remains free for light users. The paywall and digital subscriptions started globally on March 28, 2011 (Canada started on March 17), and costs from $15 to $35 per four weeks depending on the package selected.[8][9] Home delivery subscribers to the print edition of the New York Times or the International Herald Tribune receive full and free access to online content without any added charge.[10]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times

JimmySeal Wrote:What's funny? NYT is looking to start charging for their services, so all the comments in this thread are completely relevant. If people here had flipped out about the "opinions" expressed in the article, then you could say they've been punk'd, but nobody really did that.

Yeah, I realised that and edited my post. My bad. I've watched too many Onion videos on YouTube with people flipping out in the comments, much to my amusement.

But the satire in that article is hilariously accurate.