September 18, 2007

NOTHING COSTS MORE THAN IT USED TO...:

Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site (RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA, 9/18/07, NY Times)

The New York Times will stop charging for access to parts of its Web site, effective at midnight Tuesday night.

The move comes two years to the day after The Times began the subscription program, TimesSelect, which has charged $49.95 a year, or $7.95 a month, for online access to the work of its columnists and to the newspaper’s archives. TimesSelect has been free to print subscribers to The Times and to some students and educators.

In addition to opening the entire site to all readers, The Times will also make available its archives from 1987 to the present without charge, as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the public domain. There will be charges for some material from the period 1923 to 1986, and some will be free. [...]

What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.


Which leaves only the WS Journal to throw in the towel.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 18, 2007 8:08 AM
Comments

My bet is the Time never made a profit off of it while the Journal always has.

I've also noticed the phenomenon of 'indirect' links from the other side.

The WSJ uses "Sphere" to aggregate links. I've noticed moderate increases in traffic to MY site by linking WSJ articles. Sphere shows my blog as "linked to this article" and WSJ subscribers end up on my site.

Kewl.

Posted by: Bruno at September 18, 2007 8:56 AM

Now that Rupert's taking over I'm sure you'll see more of the journal site opened up. The man want's as many eyeballs to land on his properties as possible, no?

Posted by: mc at September 18, 2007 9:10 AM

Joe Nocera archives, here I come.

Posted by: Ali Choudhury at September 18, 2007 9:12 AM

The WSJ has actual content (both business news *and* political commentary) that is difficult to get anywhere else.

TimeSelect was primarily a way to keep the blogosphere from pointing and laughing at the NYT editorial page hacks.

Posted by: Chris B at September 18, 2007 10:13 AM

WSJ is throwing in the towel...see http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-dowjones19sep19,0,979619.story?coll=la-home-center...

Posted by: Foos at September 18, 2007 12:13 PM

All the Journal ever had going for it was that guys could write it off or expense it. Of course, that limited its audience to those who could.

Posted by: oj at September 18, 2007 2:11 PM

The Company pays lots of money for bigwigs to get their own paper edition of the WSJ delivered to our office every day. Except that these guys work out of the Boston office and are never up here to get their paper. So, unless I help myself to one they go straight to the recycling.
I wonder how many of both the WSJ and NYT's subscription are for people who never read them and just have an expense account to use up?

Posted by: Bryan at September 18, 2007 3:21 PM
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