New York Times to build Pay Wall?
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- It looks as though the New York Times is joining the Rupert Murdoch No News is Free News movement.
According to “internal sources”, it “seems to have settled on a system” to “make New York Times content available on a paid basis”, says ReadWriteWeb.
An announcement to that effect could be made “within days, announced within weeks, and executed in a few months,” says the story.
“This decision would be a landmark in the ongoing cultural debate on whether online content should be free or not and could represent another fundamental shift in how users expect to access and consume news, depending on which news organizations follow suit”, it says.
And if the Grey Lady does indeed take that route, it’ll end up “parallel to the Wall Street Journal, NPR, and the Financial Times,” says the story, going on:
“NPR’s membership system, the WSJ’s walled-garden system – which left some parts of the site free and others available only to paying subscribers – and the Financial Times’ system of metered access, with a certain amount of free content allowed per user, were reportedly considered by the NYT, doubtless the nation’s flagship newspaper.”
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corpse lost lost $3.4 billion in the year to the end of June, p2pnet posted in the summer of 2009, going on:
“And now he expects you to pay for it.
‘News Corp is set to start charging online customers for news content across all its websites,’ says the BBC under the headline ‘Murdoch signals end of free news’.”
It may be the end of free korporate newz a la Murdoch, we noted, but “the online world will continue to keep itself up to date without any help from him — and for free.”
..… and identi.ca
p2pnet music downloads – and stuff
ReadWriteWeb – New York Times to Charge for Online Content?, January 17, 2010
lost $3.4 billion – News is NOT free: Murdoch, August 6, 2009
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January 18th, 2010 at 4:12 pm
*boo hiss*
If the New York Times goes the paywall route, I’ll get my information elsewhere. In fact, this may be the best thing that could happen to public news organizations like NPR.
January 18th, 2010 at 6:34 pm
I don’t have a problem with them walling it off. Such moves in the past with various parties have proven this is the sure formula for losing readership.
There is very little I would be interested in, in any of the on line sources mentioned in the article above. So little that it will intrude on my life not one iota other than following a rare occasional link from a news article. After it is walled off, those that hunt news for comment will simply find their news elsewhere and I in turn will go to those sources for followup reading. It will not require me to intrude on Murdoc party to do so.
Since the BBC is publicly funded as a new service, guess what? They will get not only more traffic from my occasional visit but from others of like mind. That advertising dollars have followed the eyeballs, is not something new. Walling it off will make sure to limit the amount of eyeball traffic and further strangle advertising money.
We will be hearing again from NYT when they are claiming bankruptcy and wondering why it happened.
January 19th, 2010 at 1:05 am
When are they going to do it?
January 19th, 2010 at 3:43 pm
I’d bet dollars to donuts that these corporate media dinosaurs reverse their decision within 12 months when they realize that very very few people will actually pay for their propaganda. They are probably going down this road with some insane projections that say 20% of current readers will pay when in actuality there will only be 1 in 1000 that will pay for their shite.
The death of these parasite media empires is glorious. BTW it’s happening here in Canada too with the neocon Canwest Corporation. LOL at them and their insanely biased news.
January 27th, 2010 at 4:21 pm
Do they have their paywall up yet?
What are they waiting for?