The New York Times, one of the nation’s largest national newspapers, is erecting a pay wall for access to its website and mobile apps starting March 28.
The digital subscription plan represents a major bet by the paper, which has struggled to maintain print subscribers, that it can generate a new revenue stream by having Web readers pay for online content that has been free for years.
“This move is an investment in our future,” Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the paper’s publisher, said in his annual address to the company Thursday. “It will allow us to develop new sources of revenue to support the continuation of our journalistic mission and digital innovation, while maintaining our large and growing audience to support our robust advertising business.”
Under the new plan, Web readers will be able to view up to 20 articles, photo galleries and videos a month for free. After they hit the limit, a prompt on NYTimes.com will ask readers to sign up for a digital subscription plan that starts at $15 for four weeks of access. The paper did not specify how it would keep track of a user’s activity on its website.
Home-delivery subscribers to the newspaper’s print edition will get full access to online content as well as the company’s smart phone and tablet computer applications. International Herald Tribune subscribers will get unlimited access to NYTimes.com, but not the Times’ mobile apps.
On the smart phone and iPad apps, the “top news” section will remain free of charge, but other portions of the apps will require a digital subscription, Sulzberger wrote in a blog.
None of the digital subscription plans include access to the Times’ e-reader editions on Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, the Kobo Reader or the Sony Reader. The newspaper’s crosswords apps aren’t included either, Sulzberger wrote.
This will be the second time the newspaper has looked to online subscriptions to bring in revenue.
In 2005, it launched TimesSelect, which charged readers who didn’t subscribe to the print edition for online access to its columnists’ articles. TimesSelect lasted until 2007, when the paper opened up its website to all readers free of charge.
The content limits on the website will not apply to articles linked through blogs and social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter, even if a reader has hit the imposed cap.
Sulzberger also noted that some search engines will have a daily limit of free links to articles at NYTimes.com. Users who access the website through Google will have a limit of five articles a day.
The website’s home page and Web section fronts also will not be included in the monthly reader limits.
(Source: NY Times)
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7 Responses
LiChvod Purim: Limiting access to the anti-Israel and anti-Charedi propaganda of the Times. As alluded to by their motto, if the news does not fit their political agenda, they (the assimilated Jews, or former Jews, of the Sulzberger family) will not print it.
As the Jewish philanthropist Sam Zell said when he became owner and publisher of the Chicago Tribune: When he reads the New York Times, he cannot differentiate between the front page and the editorial page.
That’s good new, less people will have access to there bias left wing liberal agenda. They distort there news that’s why there circulation is down big time.
CH,
You must be devastated as now you will have to pay to read that liberal trash newspaper.
If CH is like I am, he gets home delivery and won’t have to pay a dime. The fact that the reading level for the Times is 5 years higher than for other NY papers means one needs brains and analytical thinking ability to appreciate it. Sorry guys.
Oops – I misstated – it’s only 3 – 4 years difference in reading level. According to a blog on Yahoo:
“Normally, 7th or even 6th grade level is the common practice of most local papers. However, papers such as the Wall Street Journal and New York Times are around the 10th grade level.”
THE NY TUMAS
BS”D
As a transplanted former New Yorker, reading the Times (pronounced teem-is as Lipa and company would pronounce tumas) was one bad habit that I just cannot break. Now B”H they are breaking it for me because I refuse to pay them one red cent for their trash.
And Mr. W, rest assured that I read far above a 10th grade level. I will have to keep myself content with business and technical publications that I must read for professional reasons (unless I do decide to buy WSJ access at some time).