Legal Commentary

NY Times May Charge For Online Access

By Jeralyn

New York Magazine reports that within days a decision will be made by the New York Times whether to charge for online access to its articles.

After a year of sometimes fraught debate inside the paper, the choice for some time has been between a Wall Street Journal-type pay wall and the metered system adopted by the Financial Times, in which readers can sample a certain number of free articles before being asked to subscribe. The Times seems to have settled on the metered system.

...The appeal of the metered model is that it charges high-volume readers while allowing casual browsers to sample articles for free, thus preserving some of the Times' online reach.

Their attempt at paid access to opinion columns was a disaster. Why repeat it? Will you pay for NY Times access? And if the Times goes this way, are other papers likely to follow? I think the paid bloggers at the Times and other MSM publications will see a huge decline in readership numbers if readers have to pay to access them. Who is going to pay for access when they can read non-MSM bloggers for free? Not a smart move by the Times.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on January 17, 2010 (boomark / email).