NY Times Announces Digital Subscription Plan

[mldavis2]

My reason is simple enough. When I was working, I tried to subscribe to the NY Times, but I live in a rural corner of Missouri and it was not available. So I read it online. Now that I'm retired on a fixed income, I simply cannot pay for an online subscription. There are too many other "add-on" expenses that appear after you think you have your budget figured out for the rest of your life, and a newspaper subscription is not one of them.

[Crowl]

Originally Posted by snipenekkid

I am somewhat perplexed that there are different prices for the phone ($15/mo), tablet ($20/mo)

I don't think it is completely terrible that they have multiple rates, but the issue I have with the pricing is the way the price plans are exclusive of each other rather than incremental.

If they charged $15/mo for phone and web and then you were paying a $5/mo premium to also gain tablet access then that would seem okay to me, but what they effectively want you to do is you want to use both a phone and tablet is pay twice for the web access.

[kennyc]

Hmmm, I noticed this announcement somewhere and I expect to see more and more of this....seems pretty expensive though....I'm paying $35/mo for my Xoom 3G wireless access already....hmmm....

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by snipenekkid

then again newspapers were on the decline loooong before the web became a part of daily life. Our local paper, a town of about 18k-20k give or take, began to decline when they were bought out by a larger parent company, Gannette. First thing they did was fire all of the actual reporters, photographers, farm out the page layout and general editing then got rid of almost all of the paper routes for the kids in town. All the articles were simply AP news and whatever people dropped off at the paper for the coming events. And oh yeah, the Obits were still there as well as the daily police blotter with a list of who got arrested over the weekend. It truly disconnected from the town and very few folks I knew kept their subscriptions. Of course that started in the mid-80s.

So the newspapers are not without blame as they just were buying up small town papers, gutting them, then feeding people nothing but wire-service "news". Or was we called it "...yesterday's news next Thursday."

But this all backfired on them as the small papers have gone teats-up and helped drag the parent companies down with them. The web just was a last ditch effort by these companies to save themselves from their own greed. Yeah, I have an opinion about the news business. They might blame the web but by the time the web came around nobody wanted to pay for the news online because we were so alienated by the physical daily editions over the previous decade. Even the LA Times and San Jose Mercury turned into, well what they are now. Though I do read the LA Times online a bit more these days. I just prefer the writing in the NY Times is all. They seem to cover more topics I find interesting.

This!

[snipenekkid]

Originally Posted by mldavis2

My reason is simple enough. When I was working, I tried to subscribe to the NY Times, but I live in a rural corner of Missouri and it was not available. So I read it online. Now that I'm retired on a fixed income, I simply cannot pay for an online subscription. There are too many other "add-on" expenses that appear after you think you have your budget figured out for the rest of your life, and a newspaper subscription is not one of them.

Isn't everyone on a "fixed income"? Well save for those of us who work for themselves that is. I know the cost for home delivery has risen from about $450/yr in 2006 to about 2x that in 2011. That is to the point where it is significant money, not that $450 is not a lot either but we all need some luxuries or what is the point. But at nearly $900/yr for the home delivery I'm not sure it's still worth the price. I do know if I kill that I won't pay for the iOS access.

I completely agree that it's a very disappointing move if they shut down full free online access. Many folks learned to like a paper because of that access. Especially people on a tight budget, and these days who isn't tightening their belts? And it's not as if there is zero revenue generated from ad impressions. Hmmm, I wonder if all the ad blocking software is actually working thus the ads don't load which means no revenue for the impression.

I think we are seeing the beginnings of Apple's (and Google too as I am sure the apps in the Android store will use the same subscription pricing) complicity in aiding various companies which have been free or very low cost move to a pay for use model. These are some very hidden costs to using these devices. I wonder what the sticker shock for some users will be once they add up the costs of all the subscriptions.

As I mentioned I like the NYT but at these prices I don't see the same value in it as once upon a time. I mean nearly a grand/yr for a newspaper? Heck, I might have just talked myself into cancelling or at least not renewing since it was just a week ago that the renewal came through.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by snipenekkid

..
As I mentioned I like the NYT but at these prices I don't see the same value in it as once upon a time. I mean nearly a grand/yr for a newspaper? Heck, I might have just talked myself into cancelling or at least not renewing since it was just a week ago that the renewal came through.

I'm continously re-evaluating. That's the reason I dropped DirecTV about 6 months back. Certain things I miss (BBC-America, Nat Geo) but I'm doing just fine without it. Unfortunately in it's place I've acquired a data plan for my Xoom tablet.

[RockdaMan]

I agree with every word of this editorial.

I will pay this price because I understand how expensive it is to produce the type of product the Times produces each day. I will pay it also because it's an incredible bargain. Spending roughly 50 cents per day (half of the cost of the cheapest hamburger at McDonald's) for access to every story the Times puts up reminds me of the miracle of mail service, which charges me just 44 cents to send a letter from Maine to San Diego or from Seattle to Miami. Yes, I know the Post Office sucks. But it's still a pricing miracle. And the Times' model is no less so today because I've haven't been asked to pay that price until now.

I do not mind the fact that others apparently have already figured out ways in which to get the Times online product for free once the price-wall comes up. Who am I to judge their consciences?

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/...-online/72640/

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by RockdaMan

...

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/...-online/72640/

Thanks for that!

[RockdaMan]

This one is especially good...you heretics.

each morning I would wake up to reporting that described in very careful detail what was actually known, not feared, about the nuclear crisis in Japan. Throughout the day, I checked my news alerts to make sure the world was not ending imminently. Tellingly, I never picked up a copy of the newspaper, reading it on the new iPad where The Times is a living thing and the better for it.

People, real actual people, went and reported that information, some of it at personal peril and certainly at gigantic institutional expense. So The Times is turning toward its customers to bear some of the cost.

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.co...times-at-sxsw/

[mldavis2]

There is no question that editorials and OpEds are top-class at the Times and Washington Post. There is true analysis and point-counterpoint. I know it costs money to run such a news organization and I don't begrudge them for being forced to charge for online service. Although there may be illegal and/or unethical ways to obtain NYTimes news, I will lose access to it because I cannot shoehorn it into an already tight budget continually strained by rising inflationary pressures and health care costs. You gotta pay to play and if you can't pay, you get what you can afford. I will not 'steal' legitimate services.

[kjk]

http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/03/tha...mbling-down-2/

All NYTClean does is call four measly lines of Javascript that hide a couple <div>s and turn page scrolling back on. It barely even qualifies as a hack. But it allows you access to any New York Times story, even when you’re past the monthly limit. (I just tested it out with a Canadian proxy server — works just like it says.)

Just not that easy to protect digital content, whether it's DRM or some web script.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by kjk

http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/03/tha...mbling-down-2/



Just not that easy to protect digital content, whether it's DRM or some web script.

Was about to post something similar.

People will find a way around this in 3... 2... 1... Oops, too late!

Even if they close that loophole, there is another one that was intentionally left open so that referrer sites (google, twitter, etc) can get in. Spoofing that has been trivial for a long time.

Either make the content publicly available, or not. Trying to do both at once isn't going to work, because there are always people out there smarter than you are, that will find ways around it.

[RockdaMan]

Clearly, the Times is aiming to accept money from those who wish to pay for their services, while not cutting themselves off from others who wish to read their articles. There are other sites out there that are tightly locked down, and they could do the same if they wished.

[kjk]

wow, some perspective on the NY Times pricing:

http://theunderstatement.com/post/40...ed-aka-the-new

Does The Times really think the mass audience is going to decide their $455/year is better spent on The Times rather than getting 20+ free articles/month from The Times plus The Wall Street Journal ($207/year) plus The Economist ($110/year) plus say The Daily ($39/year) for good measure, and still having ~$100 left over each year?

[kjk]

Great news for Kindle owners:
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix....497&highlight=

Amazon.com, Inc. today announced that customers who subscribe to The New York Times for Kindle will be receiving access to The New York Times Web site at no additional charge. The date for Kindle New York Times subscribers' free online access is yet undetermined; subscribers will receive further communication via e-mail in the coming weeks.

"Customers love reading The New York Times on their Kindles," said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content. "Given The Times' transition to a digital subscription model, we're excited to be able to offer Kindle subscribers online access to all the digital content available at NYTimes.com at no additional cost."