Ok, that may be a little drastic and premature, however, it could be (and hopefully is) a sign of things to come.
As of midnight tonight, the New York Times is ending its Times Select program. While some people think it might be a little late, I really don't care when it happened, I'm just glad it has. Times Select goes back to 2005, and had upwards of a couple hundred thousand subscribers. However, this program effectively shut out almost the entire internet from reading the Times' wonderful news copy. By shutting it down and opening it up, they are allowing us regular folk the opportunity to access their content free of charge.
This is huge for a number of reasons, not the least of which is precedent. A lot of websites (especially news media) charge for content, and it is annoying to no end. I'm sure you've clicked a link to some news article only to find out you had to pay to read it. Screw that. Hopefully the New York Times getting rid of this business model in favor of something else signals the rest of the industry to do something similar. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not against paying for value on the internet, however, if a company can find a way to support their content/program in ways other than a subscription, it's always a good thing.
So, way to go New York Times, let's hope there are many more to follow.
Tags: internet, media, money, newspapers, technology, websites
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Commodity content gets commodity pricing, so the price of news goes to zero. Great for the consumer. Unless, of course, our unwillingness to pay for content makes it impossible for the unique, high-quality, low-volume, long-form publishers to make a living, in which case we all lose.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if the New York Times, which holds itself up as a bastion of editorial integrity and quality journalism, helped kill both?
We’re building a business to put the best possible content in front of the largest possible audience. Our mission is simple: make it easy for all of us to discover and access the world's best content, quickly, inexpensively and on our own terms. Hope you'll check it out, and link to us if you like it.
Brijit, thanks for the great comment. I don't, however, think that turning great editorial content into a free commodity will be the downfall of either the New York Times or editorial integrity.
The NY Times will still be ad supported, but the content that (really only) a couple of hundred thousand people were previously paying for will now be available free. While the Times Select may have earned the NYT upwards of $10 million, by opening up that much more content, they may actually earn more than that from advertising in the long run.
Also, I've checked out your website and it looks interesting. I'll take a more detailed look at it later.