Would You Pay to Read the NYT Online?
A couple of reports dribbling out indicate that the New York Times is serious about gearing up to charge people, in some way, for online access. Poynter got its hands on an NYT survey asking subscribers how willing they'd be to pay to read the paper online. Meanwhile, Britain's Telegraph quotes an NYT exec saying that the paper will decide how—not whether—to charge online next month.
So I ask you: would you pay to read the NYT online?
Note that I didn't ask "should you pay?" There's a reason for that.
As media companies struggle and talk (maybe wishful) about online payments becomes more common, there's a tendency on both sides of the debate to cast it in moral terms. How dare a newspaper consider charging readers online when information wants to be free? How dare readers freeload off journalists when they serve such an important function? I know you can afford to do journalism cheaper! I know you can afford to pay a few bucks a week!
These arguments are—well, they're not wrong or unworthy, but they're often a distraction. As I've been saying, somebody pays for journalism. Regardless. Period. I don't care if it's a Vanity Fair writer with a fat expense account or a blogger working in her spare time. Something—ads, readers, donors, a day job, a nonprofit, a trust fund, Starbucks—provides that person with the wherewithal to pay the bills and thus the time to work. (See this earlier post for some ideas as to what might pay the bills if journalism's current business model just stops working.)
The questions are, simply: what/who will pay, will it work, and what will it pay for? (And, of course, is it worth paying for: if you don't want to pay for the NYT, say, and are honestly happy if it vanishes, that's perfectly legitimate.) Beyond that, the shoulds are just a philosophical exercise. New systems for funding the time to do journalism are not going to appear just because you, I or Bill Keller thinks they should. Few people will pay for news because they should. And news media are not going to find a way to bring you content for free just because they should.
So, will the NYT's plan work? I don't know, for a couple reasons. First, were I an expert on the separation of the larger world from its money, I probably would have made different career choices.
But also because it's not clear what the plan will be. The Telegraph article suggests two possibilities: a "metered model," in which readers are charged once they pass a certain number of views, and a "membership model," in which people pay fees for levels of access. (Both, it sounds like, will differ from the NYT's bygone Times Select experiment, which involved a premium charge only for certain columnists.)
To me, the membership model sounds better, as it doesn't create the feeling of a ticking meter, and is similar to subscribing to a newspaper, magazine or cable channel. But there are obvious challenges to either: how many people will pay at all if they can get free news—even if they don't like it as much—elsewhere? How does this stop anyone from summarizing the information in NYT stories on aggregator sites? Would a loss of readership (and influence, and reach on the Web) outweigh any short-term income gain?
I don't know. So I ask again: Would you pay for the nytimes.com? And if you can, let's save the shoulds for a different thread.
(By the way, if you want to hear NYT editor Bill Keller's thoughts about the future of print, see TIME's 10 Questions interview with him. As you'll see, it doesn't take long for him to get to it. Oh, yeah, and: So would I pay for the NYT online? I still have a job in the media and get to expense my subscriptions; I don't count. Once we all start losing our jobs, there goes another guaranteed revenue stream!)
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1
As long as there are enough other free (and respectable) news outlets online, probably not. But if the NYT establishes a model and most other print organizations follow suit, then I imagine I would end up subscribing (or whatever) to some of them.
What I don't understand is why the online advertising rates haven't caught up with the rates for print. I spend a lot more time looking at Time's online ads than I do at the ads for the magazines I actually subscribe to in print -- too many of which just end up unread in stacks on my coffee table.
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2
I would not pay for the NYT, as long as there were other news sources I could access for free. I don't read them a whole lot now, but I usually enjoy them when I do. Maybe lots of people would be willing to pay for NYT, who knows. I wouldn't be one of them. Now, if ALL news sources online shifted to subscription-based availability, then I would DEFINITELY choose the NYT as one of the sources I subscribed to. Maybe that makes me a bad person, or some kind of leech, but I have a boatload of student loans and I'm barely getting by with my salary at the non-profit organization where I work. My husband is in the social work field and makes half of what I do. We simply don't have the disposable income to pay for luxuries like online subscriptions to access information that is legally available for free many other places. But, I also seriously value access to online information, and would probably make some sort of sacrifice in the event that EVERYWHERE started charging.
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2.1
Now, I probably would have an easier time making micropayments - like a few cents to read one article, if it was linked to my paypal account and was really easy. That would seem more reasonable to the kind of NYT reader that I am (sporadic) - I wouldn't want to pay a big subscription fee for something I would use infrequently, but a few micropayments here and there would probably be more manageable for my budget. But then, I imagine that people who read it a lot would rather a subscription fee.
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2.2
If there was is a profitable way to make micropayments work, I'd put my chips on that being the future of the industry. Hope as the NYT might, there will always be free news available on the internet. Either online advertising will become mysteriously lucrative, or micropayments will be the way to go. I'd much rather pay a penny every time I load a TIME blog or pay a nickel when I comment, or whatever, than pay $5/month to have unlimited access to TIME's site (note that I use TIME as my example because I don't follow NYT anyway).
Now, as for making advertising lucrative, I think that hinges on making advertising legitimate. I've trained myself to never look at ads, just because of the assumption that clicking an ad, any ad, off any site, brings the danger of putting garbage on my PC. I don't know what the solution to that stigma is, but if companies are going to start paying a lot to advertise, that strikes me as the largest hurdle.
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3
No. Too many other sources of free (to me) news gathering still exist.
Now, flip the calendar to 12-18 months from now, when every other reputable newspaper source has done the same... we'll have to see what level of depth the cable news networks still offer for free.
Of course, others have pointed out that publicly funded entities like the BBC will continue to throw monkey wrenches into the effort to pen all content behind pay walls.
Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be journalists...
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3.1
You and Shara raise one important issue here: whether newspapers are waiting to follow the NYT's lead here, as they do in so much else. In which case, what are they being led to...?
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3.2
James, if I recall the musty history of the web correctly, at one time or another (late 90s?) most print publications tried putting their material behind pay walls; those efforts generally ended quickly as consumers (hello web, where that term is no longer synonymous with purchasers) simply moved to whatever publication didn't put their material behind a pay wall.
So if the NYT is trying such a scheme, either:
A) They think that the situation is serious enough for the industry at large that literally everyone will follow their lead sooner or later. This is my guess, hence the 12-18 month comment above.
(Though again, I see little reason to think the cable news sites and public entities such as BBC will join them.)B) Their forecasted future revenue situation is so dire they think _something_ has to be done, starting immediately.
As an aside James, since I love seeing your digital handwringing over your future, does your (librarian, I thought) wife also gaze upon your Kindle with narrowed eyes and muttered curses?
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3.3
You are partly right about Mrs. Tuned In's job, but she's an archivist (trained as a librarian), so she has the advantage of doing a job that's about actually accessing physical objects. See her work here!:
http://containerlist.glaserarchives.org/
But as for librarians in general, I think the Kindle is not much of an issue, because the field has been changed for a long time by the Web. The job has always been more about helping people find info than about controlling physical access to texts, anyway, but I suspect it's much more so now.
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4
I'm noticing a distinct trend with the comments here
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5
Just keep it free for college students like they had it back in the day
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6
Absolutely not, not even if the rest of the news sites follow suite. Local television news sites will most likely still offer free news online. If not, I'll wait and watch the news at night. There is no business model for pay-for-news in any shape or form that I will agree to. The news sites have already set the precedent for FREE news and FREE access. The American public will not agree to pay in large enough numbers to make it worth while and the underachieving sites will buckle and offer free news again, further debilitating the rest of the pay-for-news sites.
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7
Advertising has to be the answer for the news sites and the entire internet model. Internet ads should cost more than print ads because they have the ability to reach far more people and have the added advantage of being interactive and offer direct links to advertiser's webpage. New sites and other sites in general could take a look at what sites like FACEBOOK are doing. FB is using information about its users to cater the advertising to be more appealing to each individual. The articles you choose, along with other noninvasive information, could be used to cater each reader's personal advertising.
OR...They could always do what everyone else does; require everyone to sign up for "FREE" accounts and then sell your email address and information!
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7.1
1) I hope that one day we are smart enough to rise up against this targeted marketing. At the very least, I should have control over my information and one day we will. Internet rights is starting to heat up as a national topic and eventually the niche ad will become if not unlawful, it won't be useful.
2) While internet ads have the ability to reach a larger audience, it's not quite there yet. About 80% of American homes have internet access, with only 63% having broadband access (according to Pew). These days, just having dial up doesn't cut it, because it's impossible to get the same experience as someone with broadband. Compare that to the 99% that have TV (Nielson). So advertisers are holding out on that.
Advertisers are also holding out because, unlike tv and print, they can see exactly how many people are clicking on their ad or viewing the page it's on. While this can help smaller sites prove their worth, it can often hamper bigger sites because it's proof they don't live up to expectations. Also, a lot of internet ads run on a pay-per-click system. How often do you click on the ads? If you're like me, it's only by accident. You can't support a paper with accidental clicks.
Lastly, print ads have a bigger cost to produce, so papers can justify charging more for them. Online, advertisers and papers know that there's really no cost but labor (you could argue server and storage cost, but those costs are rapidly nearing zero) so they can't justify charging more.
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8
[...] NY Times considering charging readers for online access - More power to them if they decide to start charging. Nothing is free. Not even stuff on the [...]
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9
James,
To pay or not to pay? It's a difficult question. As recent college graduate, I'm used to getting things for free. We got the NYT, Denver Post, and USA Today for free on campus. I burned music for free while working at the local college radio station.
Free is the hardest price point to move from. The biggest mistake newspapers made was to give their content away for free. Even if they had been charging only a penny a page it would be easier to move the price up.
So my initial thought is no, but I've begun to change. I used to think I'd never pay for music, but now I've subscribed to Emusic and shop Amazon MP3 regularly. Why? Because it's reliable and I've grown to respect and want to pay the musicians and labels that put hard work into it.
I also realized that all the things I thought I was getting for free in college, I wasn't. I paid tuition and fees for college that provided all those services. I just didn't realize it.
The same goes for CNN, its cable network and its web network. I feel like I'm getting it for free, but really I'm not. I'm paying the cable company a subscription which in turn pays for CNN and its endeavors (along with some ads to keep the price down).
I think the NYT should take a similar approach if they are going to charge me for their site. Bundle it with other things and make sure to include things that aren't on the web and easy to reproduce on other sites. If I subscribe online, I should get a copy of the NYT or a paper of my choosing that they own, access to all their websites and their partners website. I should also get deals with their advertisers. "Oh you subscribe to the NYT network? Here's one month free on your Netflix account".
If that happens, I will gladly pay for the site. They can't just give me what they are giving now.
In summary, the NYT needs to create a package filled with more than one thing so readers feel like they are getting something for nothing.
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10
I subscribe to the NY TIMES, but I find about 3/4 of what I read in it I read online. Nevertheless, I intend to keep subscribing. I'm a writer. I think it appropriate for people to pay me when they choose to read or watch what I write. And I think it's appropriate for me to extend the same courtesy.
Aside from that, as much as the TIMES sometimes bugs me, there is no other organization doing as thorough and thoughtful a job covering my city, my state, my country and the world. It costs money for people to research and report. If those of us for whom the paper is a daily presence don't shoulder our fair share, we're at risk of getting our news from amateurs on the web who can't distinguish opinion from fact and don't have the time or patience to develop expertise. The decisions one makes can only be as good as the information on which one draws in considering them. The better the information, the better the decisions. Ultimately, my choice is a selfish one.
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11
I am willing to pay for value added, which I think the NYT staff provides. That value added can be trustworthiness, information gleaned from multiple sources/contacts, stories written by experienced journalists, etc. Heck, it's worth something just to know what axes a particular writer/enterprise has to grind.
Most of us would never take a pill that came out of a bottle simply marked "medicine" but that's pretty much what many people do when they rely upon information passed along across much of the internet.
While I don't believe the NYT portrays reality accurately, I think it provides a better approximation of what I would observe if I was on the scene than most other sources of information. If I am truly curious about the world, I am not going to observe it with my mind made up.
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12
I do not really care about the work of columnists of NYTimes, but they do excellent in-depth reporting on variety of subjects like no-other newspaper. It would be a shame if such a newspaper would have to be shutdown. I would not mind paying for NYTimes content on the web, it's one of the few that's worthy of paid content.
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13
If the question is limited to would I pay to read the NYT online, then no. But I also don't read it for free online. If the question is 'would I pay to read news online' then yes, I would. If my preferred online source of news were to begin charging to read their content I would pay their price as long as I could afford it.
I would suggest a set price that would grant access to the site for a set amount of time, much like some hotels in Vegas charge for wireless internet access. (Off topic - why aren't cities providing free wireless access to their citizens? Shouldn't access to the internet itself be free for the common good?) Whatever you are charging a person to buy your newspaper at a newsstand is what you should charge me for 24 hours of access to your site. I think charging 25-75 cents for 24 hours access to your site is more than fair. In the case of a magazine like Time it could be $3 for one week's worth of access.
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13.1
One question I'd like to ask those that say advertising should pay for the expenses of running a news organization...
"Would you be willing to pay to read news online if by doing so you were allowing the website to operate without advertisements thereby eliminating any potential pressures they would receive from corporations to cover, or not cover a story?"
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14
I will pay up to some reasonable price as I value the unique content. I already subscribe to the Wall Street Journal for the same reason. I get news from a bunch of sources, some free, some not. The NYT has aggregated a bunch of quality content producers. So long as that remains true and it is not freely available elsewhere in a timely fashion, I will pay something for it.
As Justin points out, free is a difficult price point. If there is value I will pay. The NYT has value over and above the Associated Press RRS feed. If it did not, which is the case for the vast majority of the newspapers spread across the US, I would not pay. The reason people paid for them historically is that they provided that news to their doorstep. That is the intermediation that the internet has offered. Now they need to offer something different as value.
FYI, USA Today has unique content, I would never pay for that.
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15
It has been pointed out elsewhere, the content of the printed NY Times is , for all intents and purposes, free. The price of the print edition, which I do currently pay for covers paper, production and delivery costs. The real revenue generated by the dead tree Times is from advertising. The problem they currently face is not readers reading for "free" but an inability to figure out how to compete with Craigslist.
The Internet dramatically reduces the delivery and production costs. The challenge to the Times and the newspapers in general is how to generate sufficient advertising revenue, not coming up with ways to charge readers for reading.
This would be the second time that the Times has attempted to charge for readers. The first attempt was abandoned in 2007. “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."
As I already pay for the dead tree NY Times I am not likely to pay more for on-line content.
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16
I will pay the NYT whatever they want. Would never want to miss Maureen Dowd taking down Caribou Barbie.
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17
Indeed, I would pay for the fine reporting of the New York Times. However, a modified iTunes model might serve them even better than a monthly subscription fee. It would work thus: the news of the day would be free to visitors to the website, whereas news more than a day old would cost 99 cents (or some other settled-upon fee). This way, people would still be attracted to the site for free content, but the Times could still gain revenue for its archived material. Whether people would pay for "old" news is another issue altogether, I suppose.
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18
I would not pay for the Times because I hardly ever make it to the site on my own unless I'm really bored. On the other hand, I would pay about $5/month for this magazine's site. And maybe the same for one other news site. That's 60/year each which is I think more than fair but that's what it's worth to me.
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19
I personally would not pay for the NYT, though I'm currently a "member" of the site. I just don't use it enough to justify this. But I would pay for my local papers, the Columbus Dispatch or Cleveland Plain Dealer, which I actually use daily in the course of my job. So I think there is a market for it in certain circumstances, but probably not enough to justify the number of people you send away. I agree in principle with those who think the ultimate answer is in online advertising, though I am no expert on the subject.
I think the biggest issue facing newspapers may be the divide the Daily Show jokingly pointed out when they asked why people would want to read "aged news." The news cycle has now progressed to the point that news needs to hit in the media immediately when it occurs. I found out about the past several major news events via twitter rather than through traditional media. At the moment, the newspaper model is out of whack with how the news actually works.
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20
First, I think NYTimes online is excellent, with video and interactive graphics to compliment. I should pay for it, I'll admit it.
There are a few suggestions I would make, however. The last time it went online, I just couldn't bring myself to cover the $50 subscription fee. However for a smaller monthly fee ($4) this would seem worthwhile--this is how I pay for my local, dead-tree newspaper, after all. The fee could vary based on access to videos, local classifieds, interactive graphics, etc.
More importantly, the Times deserves to get reimbursement from online blogs like Drudge and HuffPo which rely on its content for much of their traffic. As I understand copyright law, I am allowed to use another writer's ideas free of charge only as I am not using it to make a profit. Doesn't this apply to the Times's stable of writers and illustrators?
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21
Customers will not pay for this content, advertising must be the source for future financial stability in the newspaper/magazine business.
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22
Nope, I would not pay for news on any site, never have, and never will. The internet was originally a place for the free dissemination of information, and any movement away from that is doomed. Ads are probably their only viable option.
In a purely theoretical sense, paying reporters and organization for quality news makes sense, but in reality (which is what JP asked about) I would never pay a subscription fee. Maybe I'm just a cheap ass pirate of a millenial, but I pretty much believe in free news access is an inalienable right.
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23
Yes. I have no problems paying for it. I would prefer a membership model hands down (yearly/semiannually, not monthly). You cannot undervalue the quality of research and investigative reporting. My guess is that a model based solely on advertising would not sustain itself, i.e., it's ROI is too low. How many times have you clicked on that Calvin Klein link? Or given a choice to "skip an ad"in the top right corner, do you?
The Wall Street Journal & the Financial Times--niche papers, albeit--both charge for their online editions and are still well received. I'll admit I have a problem with the WSJ: they won't let you switch your print subscription to an online one. But that's another story.
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24
[...] are the final words of James Poniewozik’s current post at Time.com. Everyone knows traditional print media is having a hard time attracting revenue for [...]
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25
No, I would not.
- poniewozik Loved the season. Mrs Tuned In wd have put u on the main list RT @boredtodeath Thank u for incl us in Time's Top 10. We'll take hon mention. - 4 hours ago
- poniewozik @carr2n Virgin is the best, LAX-JFK - 4 hours ago
- poniewozik Did NPR interview abt multiscreen multitasking. After, automatically reached for iPhone in pocket. Like don draper wd have for cigarettes. - 5 hours ago
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