NYTimes.com Takes Another Swing at a Pay Model

The New York Times announced this week that it will introduce a paid model for NYTimes.com at the beginning of 2011. Corporate execs chose a metered approach that will offer users free access to a set number of articles per month and then charge users once they exceed that number.

The Times presser states:

The metered model implementation is an integral part of its comprehensive plan for enhancing NYTimes.com. In 2010 we will continue initiatives such as Times Open, Times Topics and our work to develop more active communities and more fully integrate thereal-time Web. We will continue to develop new online products and offerings as part of our effort to enhance the user experience for our readers and advertisers.

Our strategy is to build the metered model while we remain focused on making NYTimes.com more compelling, interactive and entertaining, providing many more reasons for online audiences to visit our site and stay longer. In the weeks ahead, we will be adding resources to achieve these critically important goals.

My fingers are crossed, Arthur Jr. Let's hope this pay model sticks.

This news, of course, has sent the media world in a twitter: will the Times be successful? Is this another soon-to-be-doomed Times online pay model, akin to the 1990s when it charged overseas readers who then just went to Washingtonpost.com? Or its gigantic failure of Times Select that ran from 2005 to 2007, which charged for access to editorials and columns? Even Dowd protested the affair. Check out FishBowlNY's roundup of the gossip, I mean, news about the news.

When I worked for the Times online, it was in the days when we took an image map of the front page of the Times and hotlinked a few of the stories. Check out the image included here. The entire homepage was a gigantic image whereby you clicked on an area and it took you to the article. We pretty much aped exactly what the newspaper ran in the paper the next day. Occasionally we wove AP articles into the NYTimes pieces that required updating. The cool thing about this is that I really learned how the Times saw and prioritized the news. It helped when we slowly but surely -- against the very strong objections of old-school journos who were scared to death of what was happening to their baby -- began to deviate from the paper's layout and take a more proactive lead in  newsroom deadlines.

It took the company a good eight or nine years to realize the Web was not a trend, nor would it sully its refined and esteemed pedigree. When its "Continuos News Desk" started, among the editors who would receive calls from CND it was called the "relentless news desk." But times have changed, and so too has the the Times online. It's now rocking -- video, blogs, community, etc. -- and it's now finally worth the extra dough. Maybe if this pay model works, the Times will once again lead in the news world instead of resisting the secondly deadline required in today's media world, instead of an daily deadline.

According to the Times article, within the newsroom there has long been strong sentiment in favor of charging, the primary criticism was about the wait until 2011.

David Firestone, a deputy national news editor, said, “I think we should have done it years ago. As painful as it will be at the beginning, we have to get rid of the notion that high-quality news comes free.”

I agree. However, I wonder how this will impact not readership but click-throughs. I subscribe to the print edition on the weekend -- will I now have to pay for the additional clicks? Will I now think twice before I download a Bittman recipe, or just satisfy myself with reading the summary of the news from the homepage? Maybe I'll discover there's another news entity -- the Washington Post? The Guardian?

The New York Observer has an interesting article that ponders why the Times needs 12 months to roll out its new venture, especially when the paper seems to be ailing so much these days. No kidding. It does seem like a curious lead time, like the couples who plan to marry three years from now. Why wait when you know it's the right thing to do? Perhaps to hedge your bets -- maybe the whole thing won't work out and it'll save you the heartache of sending back all the Williams-Sonoma gift sets? Perhaps it's to give readers an opportunity to vent their upset over the thought of paying now for content. John Koblin writes: Speculation that an announcement was meant to be timed to the release of the Apple Tablet, rumored to be the topic of a big Cupertino "event" slated for Jan. 27, have been dismissed (often in the same venues in which it was initially raised.) Read the full article >>

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