The New York Times announced this week that they will start digital subscriptions in the United States. The idea has already been implemented in Canada, and the news came to the rest of the world on Monday. According to a letter from the times, Canada was being used as an experiment (does not say much for them) in order to fine-tune and fix any lingering issues before unleashing the new revenue generator on the globe. Subscribers to the newspaper will still have free access on the internet, as will select other folks with subscriptions to the International Herald Tribune. Non-subscribers will still be able to view the website as long as they stay under the 20 article views per month quota. If a reader exceeds this amount, they will be asked to subscribe. Prospective subscribers will have options for different packages they would like to receive in their daily news. For those who use search engines to find news, the New York Times has them covered as well. Articles will be free to view for them, however there will be a daily limit as to how much they can do that. I think they did an excellent job of pricing their services. The way the times set it up allows causal news readers to be in the know, but they also can generate revenue from their more faithful readers. The faithful readers probably won't have a problem subscribing to their favorite news organization either. This will surely point online news in the right direction in terms of generating revenue, but there is still work to be done.
No comments:
Post a Comment