Report: NY Times to axe Times Select
Cory Bergman August 7th, 2007
NY Post is reporting that NYTimes.com is poised to shut down its Times Select subscription service and move the premium content back to free. NYTimes.com won’t confirm/deny. The number of web-only subscribers (from $7.95 to $49.95) in June was 221,000, down from 224,000 in April. Of course, the newspaper industry has watched the Times Select effort very closely. Is there room for premium content on a newspaper site?
9 Comments Add your own
1. Anonymous | August 7th, 2007 at 9:09 am
I thought TimesSelect was a good system. It protected us from people like Thomas Friedman.
2. thedetroitchannel | August 7th, 2007 at 9:12 am
i think safran touches on this in his piece contained in terry heaton and his newsletter.
the “premium” part, i think, comes in the form of INFORMATION rather than a few bucks changing hands.
if a web channel wants my “currency” they have to EARN it.
a concept mass marketers can’t quite grasp… yet.
i don’t think that singling out the newspaper industry is such a wise move either. EVERYBODY ought to be looking at this as a way to charge a heckuva lot more for advertising.
3. fleetwood mack | August 7th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
One more lesson in user behavior The Times was slow to learn: News content is expected to be free.
Wonder how much the building of the system and the marketing of it cost relative to the amount they will claim they made.
4. Chris | August 7th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Don’t mind Friedman so much; but it certainly kept most blogs free of Paul Krugman quotes for at least a year, and that’s been a good thing.
Maybe the real lesson isn’t whether there’s room for premium content, but whether people will pay for valuable, factual, balanced content…this is still untested.
Chris
5. Aidian | August 7th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
The Sacramento Bee recently started a “premium” section devoted to politics/public policy that includes lots of quality reporting and opinion journalism.
It’s a good operation and also, on a purely visceral level, a complete insult to every regular subscriber, especially considering the amount of random wire copy and “bus plunge” stories the paper carries.
I think it bugs me more because the paper hired a couple of the state’s best political bloggers and put them behind the firewall, too.
6. Alyssa | August 7th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
As a Sunday NY Times subscriber I’m interested in finding out what will happen to my Times Select account.
7. Anonymous | August 7th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
Thomas Friedman actually went on television and admitted — proudly — that he had not read CAFTA, but endorsed it anyway because — and I’m not making this up — it had the words “free trade” in it. Is American journalism in so sorry a state now that the most prestigious journalistic endeavor in the nation employs a writer who literally declares “the world is flat” without even bothering to venture to the edge and see for himself? Pathetic.
8. Michael G. | August 8th, 2007 at 9:50 am
Slightly off-topic, but…
If only ESPN would follow suit. Their Insider feature is annoying. They offer the same scores and basic stories done by all other sites for free, but charge for in-depth.
Yes, it probably is quality coverage that may set you apart from the competitors, but isn’t that why I come to your site in the first place?
If your only free offerings are on par with the free offerings of every other major site in your area of specialization, what good reason do I have to come to your site if I can’t get that in-depth coverage that sets you apart?
In fact, it even worsens my experience by showing me all the things I *can’t* access.
9. Weaselbuddha | August 13th, 2007 at 11:02 pm
Much of the reporting on TimesSelect has gotten several issues wrong. TimesSelect does cover the Op-Ed content, but also allows limited access to archived stories. If you want to see content older than three days, you have to be either pay or be a TimesSelect member.
Additionally, by subscribing to the Times, even just the Sunday Times - you are covered for TimesSelect.
This was what I thought was the beauty of the idea, push people towards subscribing to the paper - so that they don’t feel as if they are just buying web content. As the other comments show, the idea of paying for news web content is widely reviled.
The Times is a wonder, and that it is free is, to me, a astounding turn about of value for value.
I was more than glad to subscribe to the physical paper, as to have access to stories from last week, and some of the editorial content.
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