NYT- Pay to Read in 2011
Announced yesterday: beginning in 2011 the New York Times will try charging for online access, again.
When they tried this a few years ago- they shut it doesn’t after two years, the initial attempt had less that one million subscribers, and many who left the site at payment just went somewhere else.
If you get your news and information from the Internet, you most likely have a list (bookmarks) that you move through – perhaps daily, gleaming content interests you, reading a bit here and there – the first time you hit the pay wall on the new NYT what will you do? Reach for your credit card or move down your list to the next source?
The Times is the largest viewed non-aggregator site today, how much add revenue will they loose when they shut out viewers that choose not to pay?
The winners in this will be NBC, NPR, Reuters and the BBC. The losers; us who rely on the Times as the ‘Paper of Record,’ and the fine content creators that work there.
What can change their demise – give us something we can’t get anywhere else – and whether for good or worse- there’s always something else one quick click away…