Would you pay to read the New York Times online? The financially-strapped Gray Lady's already tried charging (TimesSelect) and it was a bust. Big name columnists like Maureen Dowd, Thomas, Friedman, and Frank Rich saw their readership drop faster than Tiger Woods' pants, and bitched to the Powers That Be: Exec Editor Bill Keller and publisher Arthur O. "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr.
Now the Powers That Be are planning to take another stab at online fees. The definition of insanity: repeating mistakes hoping for different results. But a torrent of red is pelting the Times. The thinking appears to be: staying free is rolling the dice on future online ad revenues.
can't wrap the fish guts in the on line version. the main reason their circulation figures went up in the summer.
ReplyDeleteI don't get it: We're willing to pay for a subscription, but not for the same stuff on-line?
ReplyDeleteOh--that's right. It's a different "we". The "we" willing to pay for a subscription is the literate "we". The other "we" is the doofus under-30 riffraff setting us on the course of no newspapers at all and no resources to check corruption in the first half of this century.
I must admit I paid for TimesSelect just to read Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich. One of the few, no? It failed then. It will fail again.
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid you're right. But just who is going to ferret out corruption and fraud in the decades to come? Some blogger in his parents' basement? They may be sincere, and even occasionally lucky, but they lack the resources for consistent persistent digging. If you're young and totally lacking in ethics, this is your era. Go forth and plunder.
ReplyDeleteThe online world isn't the same as the one in which people pay for a physical thing that shows up in their mail boxes. Reader's Digest, for example, is well worth the piddly annual subscription charge, but an identical online version of that is something I'd usually only be directed to for a single article - and I'm just not going to bother with that. Having that little magazine in my hands, even when that issue isn't particularly read-worthy, has a value to me.
ReplyDeleteI think the way forward is to bundle subscriptions to various publications into one relatively low-priced annual charge.
Same is true for radio progammes: I don't want to pay for listening to only a single "The Jim Bohannon Show" that I missed over-the-air, but if I had to pay a single annual fee to get access to a number of different radio shows whenever I wanted or needed to, I'd likely pay it and feel better about the purchase. I guess that's why I pay for my Sirius satellite in-car radio.
I'd also feel better knowing that those who created the product would be paid for their work.
I tend to agree. I don't want to make 164 online payments to 164 online newspapers (that's an example--I don't read 164 of anything)but I'd be willing to pay a set fee that covers anything online--newspaper-wise. Maybe include magazine too (not blogs--can't do blogs. Maureen Dowd is a good read.
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