The New York Times to Charge for Some Articles at Its Web Site
Another experiment was called the "Times Select", readers had to pay $50 per year to read articles on "The Times". This experiment attracted 221 000 customers but in 2007 this service was abandoned because it prevented advertising sales. Advertisers generally pay more if the website has bigger traffic.
The new step reminds of "The Financial Times". The idea was simple: ordinary readers are attracted by allowing to read a certain number of articles but those who wanted to read more had to pay cash.
This plan will continue to present extracts from articles in search results by "The Times". The ultimate question is: how will this innovation change the number of readers. Maybe other portals, like "Associated Content", will gain more users because it delivers articles free of charge. Still, as far as it goes for the income, the newspaper will probably have an even bigger profit but it definitely is going to lose a certain amount of readers.
The advertisers will probably adapt to this change and they will surely find a way to advertise to the audience. Or, this will be yet another attempt to tax news because the number of social networks, blogs and other portals, readers will not find it necessary to pay for news which they can find in other websites.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/business/media/21times.html
Published by John Rivers
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