New York Times to start charging $15 for iPhone, iPad subscriptions by June - Page 3

Because you can see more letters on the screen.
(sarcasm)

edit: And I AM a NYTimes reader now

It isn't a surprise that most of the comments are negative: many of the comments are clearly from non-NYT readers so this wouldn't effect them in any way.

The question will be how many loyal online readers will be converted to paid customers?

I am on record as being a skeptic. I think it is easier to sell an electronic subscription to a financial newspaper than a consumer paper -- that is why both the WSJ and Financial Times are doing OK selling digital subscriptions.

But what about the Times? Hard to say. Times readers, based on the demographics, tend to be wealthier, more educated than the general population (sorry Fox News watchers). So if any of the major consumer dailies have a chance to succeed at this, the NYT might just be the one.

But . . . that doesn't make it a good model for everyone else. If someone is willing to pay $15 every four weeks for the Times, that doesn't mean they will pay for the Chicago Tribune or the Torrance Daily Breeze. If the NYT succeeds at this experiment it might only prove that the NYT is the exception to the rule (that web readers won't pay), not that the rule is wrong.

Most of the comments are negative based on the proposed business model. Even NYT fans above seem to indicate this.

What is a NYT fan? Is a newspaper something to root for? I read the NYT, but I am no "fan". But having said that, go Giants!

Well, I read the NYTimes app everyday on my iPhone. It has been my go to app for news. I don't think there is another app (that doesn't require a subscription) that provides nearly as good of news as the NYTimes (and I am saying this as a conservative Republican, for what its worth). However, with this development, I can definitely say that I will not be looking to the NYTimes app for news anymore. First, $15/month is way to expensive. Second, if I were going to pay for news, I would go with the WSJ before the NYTimes.

The term fan can actually be used in a non-sports context (i.e. I am not a fan of meatballs), Here I only meant people who indicated they were readers of the paper. But perhaps fan was the wrong term.

My main point still stands though. (btw I am also a Giant fan, so it seems we have one thing in common!!)

I am actually in this business and I have not decided whether the model will work. I think the vast majority of AI readers are not really the targets for a metered paywall approach. The perfect target is someone who reads the NYT website (or apps) every day and fairly deeply. (me, for instance)

Also, don't forget that on any day they could do what app developers do and suddenly say "hey, today it is only $50 for the whole year" suddenly quite a number of people will become good prospects. (And yes, they do plan on offering an annual subscription, they apparently haven't figured out how much they want to discount that level yet.)

I find that most people in tech hate the idea of paywalls, while most journalists think they are a great idea. As a publisher, I am skeptical, but know that newspapers are personnel intensive operations -- and paying for those newsroom and production folk costs big bucks. The job of paying for all of that became a lot harder once newspapers lost (some would say 'threw away') the classified advertising business that accounted for a lot of the profit in the newspaper business (in addition to being a former publisher, I was once a classified advertising manager, as well).

I _may_ go for this. If any news source can charge this amount for access, it's the NY Times. I'm now so used to the NYT app (buggy as it is) that I actually prefer it to reading a physical paper, with all its page- (and in the case of the NYT, section-) turning.

To those who think that Yahoo is a trusted news source, you tell me how many reporters they employ.

The problem is that I already pay $24 a month for my dead-tree LA Times subscription, and increasing my monthly news nut to nearly $40 may bust the budget. And then what happens when the Washington Post starts charging too? Perhaps all the "papers" need to get together and charge one amount for access to all of their content.

Documented by whom...Media Matters? Give me a break. ALL news organizations are influenced by their corporate culture at least to some degree. ALL present a point of view. The NYT's liberal bias truly IS well-documented, for example. The same applies to CBS, CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, the Houston Chronicle, The LA Times, et al.

Nonsense. He is an asian scalper.

Remember $4.50 of that $15 goes to Apple. The price is really $10.50 plus the Apple tax. So stop whining, because you're the same guys that defend Apple and its rates. Is Apple the only one allowed to eat?

Which Giants are you referring to? The football Giants or baseball Giants?

TNYT has some stones. Now well find out if the MSMs decline is due to the Internet or the bias of the reporters. (Hint: its the bias of the reporters.)

The ones that broke the hearts of their fans by moving to San Francisco. (are there Giants in football?)

But even at $10.5 it's still way too expensive. So yes, the distribution channel (in this case Apple) does cause the price to be higher but it's not really the main reason why people won't pay for it. If it's like $3 a month, yeah ~$1 goes to Apple, but those who'd pay $2 a month would likely still pay $3 a month.

The NYT is a great paper--although I think they've fallen off the beam a bit. The lead up to Iraq knocked them down two notches in my book. Still, for main stream news, I can't imagine picking another paper over it. But this is the age of the Internet and they can't charge that amount. I think only loyal, rich, older people will pay it. What sort of demographic is that to base your future on? If people stop reading, they are losing young eyeballs for good. Ain't coming back.

Personally, if I had to dish $15-20/mo. for very publication I read online, I'd be broke. How about a basket I can put some of my faborites into for that amount? And one price per subscriber--not per device. If I buy a paper, I share it with my wife. Would they charge me twice?

So I'll take my 20 freebies a month for now and get the rest elsewhere. The New Yorker, another great publication likewise blew it on pricing but my wife still gets the print edition so I'm covered there.

For those that think CNN, MSNBC, FOX, et al, cover the news in the same depth and quality as the NYT, you simply have no ability to discern quality journalism. And this has nothing to do with liberal vs conservative either. Good journalism is good journalism.

I think they will find, if they were charging like $25 a year, they would have 100 times the subscribers. They need to figure out, the web/internet is not like delivering pulp to the door.

Do you realize the NYT is the official mouthpiece of the White House and Liberal/Progressives everywhere? The "news" they print is heavily censored and spun

Go NY Giants!!!

.

Half surprised no one here mentions this ...

Micropayments - dunno, maybe $0.05 per view/visit/page ?

If not already able to do this, technically speaking, then we should be close, yes ?

Seems is The Way to go, and not try hold on to the old methods and models of past

Apple proved that already to the Music Industry

.

And not surprised in least this word gets used very little here in comments ...

Journalism, Journalist, etc

Are many 'reporters' and 'bloggers' and 'talkers' - Journalism is an Academic Pursuit

Doubt many of you under 50 have a true appreciation of the difference

Has been a concerted effort by the Mass Media Conglomerates to 'dumb down' our Culture

Makes their job easier - and all they really want anyway is to 'sell advertising'

But wasn't always like that - CBS News is good example

William Paley kept it independent, that's long gone and now we get a joke like Katie Couric

.

Finally ...

The New Media, like AppleInsider - must find some way to make enough to survive

Imagine they're making a little bit off ads, etc ... but doubt it's enough to call this a 'real job'

And, TY AppInsider - you're about only one left of the Mac Sites to keep that Journalism Standard

10 or so years ago was common with MacSurfer, MacMinute - and even VersionTracker

But many of the original founders are either dead, or sold out

Was nice when we could 'easily trust' the information, cause we could 'easily trust' the source

THAT is Journalism - and 'it' shows in the elegant/simple way of how info is presented

Don't have to think about it, or decipher it, or analyze it - it's just there, and easy to spot

Hummm - sounds like something Apple has always adhered to, yes ? (smile)

Anyway ...

AppleInsider, and others, at some point will probably need to 'charge something' to stay in Biz

Let's hope it's that $0.05 per visit

With 7,000,000,000 potential customers every day

Would be LOT of nickels

.

O'Reilly's talking points covered the sensationalism of the other networks. His coverage is pretty good. Fair and Balanced.

They may be a WH mouthpiece of sorts (I would call it establishment, to be more precise). But they hardly liberal--unless you consider pro Bush's Iraq War liberal. There are way morel iberal sources to read in the US and worldwide but Americans are so right wing that everything looks left of center to most.

Not sure what fantasy world the NY Times is living in. At least The Daily and the Wall St. Journal have nice apps that take advantage of the iPad. NYT provides a boring replication of a plain browser experience with equally uninteresting content and then charge extra for it!!! Other than David Pogue they have become useless. GOODBYE NYT.

This is because through the iPhone, the NY Times has access to an educated and rich ordinance. Like the dumb Wall Street Journal, they can keep their paid content concept cloistered for the dumb few willing to chalk any amount of money for something that is normally free. I plan to remove the NY Times application forthwith from my iPhone when a subscriber fee is initiated. And that is all to be said about that subject.

I hope you don't think you're (remotely) serious.

I am willing to give you the benefit of doubt.

Actually, the funny thing is that they did, but they weren't getting many takers. Then they did a promotion with Microsoft that if you went to the site using IE, you could sign up for a free account and their readership skyrocketed. (I remember downloading IE onto my Mac, signing up for the free account, deleting IE.) now they are trying to return to what was already demonstrated to be a failed model.

If it isn't your "cup of tea," why would it have made any difference?

The folks at The Daily must be pouring champagne today!

Actually, NYT's biggest mistake was making their news free then suddenly yanking it away from us if we don't pay. As you can see, that is backfiring. People would be far less offended if NYT had done what WSJ did and charge from day one. NYT wouldn't have many takers at first, and would likely have lowered prices over time, but at least they wouldn't have pissed off everyone like they did today. All papers that gave away their content for free online will receive a similar backlash.

Hell yeah there is and they stomped the stuffing out of Tom Brady.

I think this new subscription plan by the NYT will be a complete failure. They're a top notch news organization (despite the belief of the extreme right that they are a "liberal mouthpiece", and despite the fact that they've seriously weakened their online brand with too much blogging that doesn't meet basic standards of journalism), but as a general news organization, their product isn't completely unique, and, for example, any big stories they break will be picked up quickly by other news services.

On the other hand, they have lost a lot of ad revenue, much of it to craigslist, which has pretty much decimated their classified advertising revenues for both print and online editions. One problem I think is that the quality of the ads on the online version has been pretty much crap. If you read the comments, on their website, in response to this announcement, you'll see a bunch of "rollover ads" complaints, and when I think back, I realize that it was those ads on their site that originally prompted me to install an add blocker. The quality of ads and products is well below that which has been traditionally embedded with news content in the print editions, particularly, for example, in comparison to the print version of the Sunday magazine.

I think part of the problem is that they ceded control of the ad content to ad networks who, as we all know, produce crappy, annoying ads, often for crappy products and services. Cheap ads for a cheap, annoying experience experience. One solution for them and other newspapers may be to first recognize that cheap Internet advertising isn't enough of a money maker for a large organization.

I think a better alternative for them, one that would maintain their readership levels, might be to approach Apple regarding bringing iAds to the web. Just as these seem to be proving their merit on mobile devices, fewer, higher quality, more engaging ads on high quality websites would likely be more effective for advertisers, and more profitable for website operators. I don't think the problem is that you can't monetize a news site through advertising; I think the problem is that you can't monetize a news site with the trash that current web ad networks put on your site.

I prefer "sound bites" and "talking points" to real news anyway.

Uh, who are those guys exactly? You're missing the point. No one begrudges the Times' right to make money...or need to make money. The point is they are going to fail with this model. It's not just the specific price point that's the issue. It could be $9.99 and still fail. The point is that people in general--even NYT readers--aren't necessarily interested in replacing their physical copies of the paper (perhaps some will, but not enough). In other words, the Times' mistake was assuming there is quite a bit of brand loyalty. "We're the greatest newspaper in the world. If we have a good product at a reasonable price, people will buy." The problem is this is a 20th century media business model. They fail to realize their product might be good and their price might be reasonable, but there are literally thousands of other products that do the same job--for free. When push comes to shove, people won't way $15.00 a month for content they can basically get for free elsewhere. So what would they pay? Probably $5-7. But even there, I don't think they'll get to critical mass. They might stay afloat. To really be successful, they need a totally different model: Cheap, but bulk.



Totally agreed.


Whatever. Props for beating the Cheatriots, but your QB is a girl.



Stop right there. They ARE a liberal mouthpiece. That's not really part of this discussion, however,


That might be an idea. But I do think it's been shown that supporting a full news organization through online ads won't work. A subscription model could work...if it's done right.

Repeating this doesn't make it true, it just identifies your viewpoint as coming from the far, radical right, so everything but right-wing mouthpieces look "libral" (sic) to you. I also don't think you even know what the terms 'liberal', 'conservative', 'left' and 'right' even mean. Being on the right doesn't necessarily make you a conservative, just as being on the left doesn't necessarily make you a liberal. But, lots of people in this country like to think in narrow little political caricatures without understanding any of the issues or the politics involved, mostly out of fear, self-centeredness, and intellectual immaturity.

The NYT is a fine newspaper. It is worth buying, of course. If the "content" is bad, thats you, not them.

Who knows? Clearly they have a loyal readership - if thei model went with the normal print subscription, or with some extra facilities on the website they could be onto a winner.

And of course, there is the non-US market - not something they compete in at the moment.

I'm in publishing as well. If they charged $0.25 for access past the front page (or about half of what they propose to charge), they'd have me most days.

Shit! Is that you dad? What the hell you doin' here? This is my hangout... get back to having fun with Scrabble on your iPad!

15 more good reasons I won't see their biased and oft-fabricated tripe.

You can;t even wrap electronic fish in the eTimes.

Have you ever actually read the NYT?