NYTimes.com to Charge Loyal Readers in 2011

January 30th, 2010 • Related • Filed Under • by tisha

The New York Times website will take a large leap of faith beginning in January 2011. The newspaper will begin to charge frequent visitors a flat-rate fee for unlimited access to the site’s content. A few initial articles will be free but after that, it’s a game of pay to play unless you already subscribe to the regular paper or the Sunday edition.

Many in the news industry are holding their breath for good results. The New York Times Company has stated the new pay system would not affect the millions of occasional visitors to the website but would allow the company to cash in on the loyal visitors. The actual fundamentals of the plan have not been developed in full yet, including how much it would cost for the flat-rate fee. For many years, publishers have relied on support of digital advertising to support their online presence but since advertising is dramatically decreasing in the last two years, publishers are hoping to recoup more money from their regular readers than they would end up losing from advertisers.

NYTimes.com is the most popular newspaper website in the nation claiming more than 17 million readers a month just in the US according to the latest Nielsen poll. In addition to its fame, NYTimes.com is also a leader in revenue from advertising income. This fact means the company has more to lose if the move doesn’t work. “We can’t get this halfway right or three-quarters of the way right. We have to get this really, really right.”
Times Company chairman and publisher of the newspaper Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said in an interview.

Any site visitor will continue to have full access of the home page and be able to read individual articles through search engines including Google, Yahoo and Bing for free. Subsequent article clicks will be tracked toward the monthly limit. The Wall Street Journal and Newsday also charge for access to major sections of their Web sites as well as smaller outfit including The Financial Times, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and The Albuquerque Journal currently. Many more online newspaper sites are expected to join in the process in 2010 and beyond.

Readers who have already sent in emails to the newspaper stating they would support the new fee-based browsing were already outnumbered by those consumers refusing to pay for visitation.