(Slightly) Off-Topic Poll: Paying for The Times Online?
Over on the Silicon Alley Insider today, Henry Blodgett makes the case that The New York Times needs to start charging a subscription fee for full access to the newspaper’s extremely popular website. Given what a lifeblood of content it is for this blog (and most others), the answer is a no-brainer ‘yes’ for us,…
Over on the Silicon Alley Insider today, Henry Blodgett makes the case that The New York Times needs to start charging a subscription fee for full access to the newspaper’s extremely popular website. Given what a lifeblood of content it is for this blog (and most others), the answer is a no-brainer ‘yes’ for us, but we’re curious to see where readers come down on the issue.
I get the Times M-F on my kindle, which is fantastic, as I can easily read it on the train. It’s $13/month. My husband reads the Times during the week on his IPod Touch.
We still get the paper paper delivered on the weekends.
We are both happy to cut way down on our paper recycling, and my husband would pay for the IPod content if it came to that.
We both have our problems with the Times, but as others have said, the world will be a much scarier place if news reporting budgets continue to get smaller and smaller–we need investigative journalists as well as reporters in far-flung places. AM New York ain’t gonna pick up the slack.
There are news sites and blogs I read all the time, but they are frequently linking to stories from newspapers or the wire services. It’s unfair to expect that we can get high quality news content for free. If journalism’s main source of support becomes online advertising, we’re in deep trouble.
I’m out of state but used to have it delivered daily. I now read it online, but its not really the same as having the print version. However, I would gladly pay $80 – for ideology and all – to continue the important function the NY Times provides. I’m in Seattle, and our newspapers are just not that interesting. And it looks like one of them will be out of business shortly.
$80 a year is not that much, I would pay it. The changes to the NYT people are complaining about here very likely came about because of dwindling profits over the years. To not buy newspapers, this one or any others, and justify it by pointing out the changes and compromises that occur because those publications are struggling, that’s a little funny to me.
I find it ironic that most people, myself included, won’t pay for a NYTimes subscription but will still log on to Brownstoner and read NYTimes (and NYPost, NYDN, etc.) articles. What if Brownstoner had to pay to link those articles?
FWIW, lesterhead posted “I’m surprised by how many people today think they deserve content for free.” No one said we deserved free content. But, it’s there so why not take advantage of it?
I gave up buying the paper the last time they raised their prices. Too much money for less and less news and more and more inserts. I still much prefer the physical paper, for its completeness and for the serendipity of articles I probably would not otherwise read. Now, I read it online (mobile and desktop), and pay $30 a year for a subscription to the crossword puzzle (downloaded to my iphone).
Legion, that’s my husband’s rant word for word; I, like BayRidgeGirl, love the physical reading of my morning paper, and to save our marriage we compromised; we now get the paper paper Fri-Sun, and I have to read it online the rest of the week. The NYT bias, while overt, is so predictable that by now I just tune it out like static. What I find more annoying is their ridiculously self-referential, and self-reverential, arts criticism. Oh, and their incredibly boring waste-of-dead-trees Sunday magazine. And their hilariously gay-o-centric Style section. And the smug, ponderous book review section. Oh, dear…that would be all the weekend stuff…why am I subscribing, again? Of course…for an excuse to linger over bagels and coffee and NOT sit in front of this bloody computer!
I have been reading the NYTimes since I had a high school subscription. I remember having to read the supreme court decisions for social studies class. I continued to read through college and beyond.
No Longer.
The paper took a far left turn around 2004, combined with shoddy reporting practices (think the Blair incident), followed by more than 40 front page stories about Abu Gharib prison (for God’s sake, the Kennedy Assassination didn’t get that kind of coverage), followed by leaking of intelligence at the risk of US security (as in the report on wiretapping of known al quaeda operatives), etc. etc.
I cancelled my subscription and don’t miss it.
Perhaps if they can prove to be objective in their reporting, to do thorough analysis and commentary on issues of national importance without having their editor in chief act as a shill for the Democratic party( one too many dinners with the Clintons on the upper East side), perhaps I would consider paying for this shell of a paper again.
Not likely though. The paper is getting what it deserves, let them go down in bankruptcy for their hubris.
Oh yeah, I would probably pay about $50 a year if I really could not read the NYT any other way.
I agree with geekyfemme. Most blog do not do much original reporting. There would hardly be anything left on Gawker if it could not link to mainstream media: magazines, newspapers, and clips from tv.