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New York Times' Print and Digital Units Reportedly Disagreeing Over iPad Content Pricing

thecartoonguy said:
Agreed. These morons have no idea what's going on in the digital world. Why would anyone pay that much when are dozens of free options.
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So let me get this straight.... according to the FB's, the iPad was going to be a killer content delivery module. Yet when it comes time to price said content, people return to the "why should I pay for this when I can easily find it for free" argument. For free on a laptop, PC, netbook, iPhone, iPod, Blackberry, television. Yet the iPad's content is going to revolutionize computing. :rolleyes:

Something doesn't..... compute.

MikhailT said:
Don't confuse NYT application with the actual newspaper. The NYT application is up to date constantly on the news and will include new opinions and other articles as it comes in. Not to mention it'll probably include videos, audios, color pictures and so on. That's the difference between the NYT newspaper typical price and this iPad application.
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You completely missed firteen888's point - why will anyone pay for a NYT subscription on an iPad when he/she can fire up Safari on the thing and go to NYT's website or Google >>> News >>> headlines.
 
ShiftyPig said:
For free on a laptop, PC, netbook, iPhone, iPod, Blackberry, television.
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Most free content you can get on these devices you'll be able to get free on the iPad. The NYT and other media are planning to move their free services to subscription services, at which time you won't be able to get them free on a laptop, PC etc.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

I would pay 100 dollar a year if the content was good and I get well written well researched articles were they follow up on stories. right now the times doesn't deliver that in a good online way. it's still just a HTML version of the print version. there needs to be more innovative use of Internet and media. I would never pay 360 dollar a year for only one paper. a bundle of times, post, time magazine and ct maybe. but 30 bucks a month for a online times alone? this people lost contact to the new reality of the Internet.
 
cmaier said:
And why wouldn't you be copying and pasting?
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That's what I'm trying to understand. What content would you need to drag and drop that you couldn't copy and paste?

Or is this just some sham 'dealbreaker' that's being invented by nitpickers?
 
pondie84 said:
Most free content you can get on these devices you'll be able to get free on the iPad. The NYT and other media are planning to move their free services to subscription services, at which time you won't be able to get them free on a laptop, PC etc.
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I would suggest that you research what happened to Newsday's website traffic when they tried moving to a subscription-only model and report your findings back here.

Edit to add: I won't be a jerk: they got 35 subscribers in three months.
 
andiwm2003 said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

I I would never pay 360 dollar a year for only one paper. a bundle of times, post, time magazine and ct maybe.
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You can get a bundle of the Times, post, magazine, etc. free...its called Google news. Try it!;)
 
ShiftyPig said:
You completely missed firteen888's point - why will anyone pay for a NYT subscription on an iPad when he/she can fire up Safari on the thing and go to NYT's website or Google >>> News >>> headlines.
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I got his point and I already stated earlier in the thread that nobody is going to pay for something that's free on the web.

However NYT website isn't going to be free after 2011. They are going to put up a paywall. Google isn't going to be able to do their stuff if many news site switch to a paywall like NYT.

You missed the point of what I was trying to point out in his post,
".....but we can get it much faster than having to wait until the next morning to find out what happened the day before. If something newsworthy happens in the world, it's on the internet 5 minutes later. I mean, most newspapers probably sell because people just want something to read on their commutes to work. Now they won't need newspapers, they'll have all the news in the world right on their ipads...without having to pay a cent (besides cost of ipad and 3g service of course)...."

I was trying to point out why NYT might be justified in feeling that they should price higher than the usual.
 
Getting a Sunday-only subscription to the NYTimes gives me free Times Reader access on a daily basis, and my monthly cost is $7.50/wk (I save the Book Review and Times Magazine supplements for reference). Adding iPad content for $10/month would be alright, though I would hope that as a subscriber, I'd get something for free.
 
manhattanboy said:
You can get a bundle of the Times, post, magazine, etc. free...its called Google news. Try it!;)
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actually you can't google news lifts the articles from newspapers. they will shut down this as soon as they have a new electronic subscription service.

i'm willing to pay for good content. but the format has to be much better than what i get now. i envision a sort of self learning system that figures out what i'm usually interested in and formats me a personal paper onto my iPad. it has to be smart enough to spike in important news that i would normally have missed. this sytem has to offer all media: text, pictures, video, audio, links to dictionaries, latest news, forums, expert discussions and all that.

if this is good its worth as much as a TV channel.

I pay 600 bucks a year for TV. 5 channels are what I really watch. so the times would be as much as one channel=120 bucks a year or so. i don't mind some ads if they are interesting.
 
MikhailT said:
I got his point and I already stated earlier in the thread that nobody is going to pay for something that's free on the web.

However NYT website isn't going to be free after 2011. They are going to put up a paywall. Google isn't going to be able to do their stuff if many news site switch to a paywall like NYT.

You missed the point of what I was trying to point out in his post,
".....but we can get it much faster than having to wait until the next morning to find out what happened the day before. If something newsworthy happens in the world, it's on the internet 5 minutes later. I mean, most newspapers probably sell because people just want something to read on their commutes to work. Now they won't need newspapers, they'll have all the news in the world right on their ipads...without having to pay a cent (besides cost of ipad and 3g service of course)...."

I was trying to point out why NYT might be justified in feeling that they should price higher than the usual.
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True, his point about the speed was a bit off.

But again, I think this board needs to take a field trip to Newsday and ask how a paywall worked out for them. It's only thing to buy a 99¢ app.... completely diffferent to think people will be signing up for news subscriptions. I get the paper WSJ w/ frequent flier miles, which also gives me access to the website. So I'm out.
 
Magazines are a much more realistic expectation for the iPad than newspapers. People don't use newspapers for news anymore, because by the time it gets there, it's old! The internet is like a big, free newspaper.

Magazines, if they sold for $2-$5 a pop ever month or so, and had tons of interactive content, could be doable. I still subscribe to multiple magazines that I'd be willing to pay for as a digital download instead.
 
rumplestiltskin said:
$20-30/month? NFW! Like others have said, there's nothing in the Times worth that much. $10/month? Perhaps but I agree that the $5/month fee would make it a no-brainer.
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I wouldnt pay $5/month for any news source. Poop, I paid less than $5 for my 4 different year long magazine subscriptions delivered to my door.

Would someone really pay $5 a month for this?

Only way this crap works is if, they have tiers and provide a bunch of different subscriptions to different sources. IE $5 a month for NYT, WSG, etc. $5 for 5? or $10 for 5, $20 for 15. Something like that.
 
This is what happens after Murdoch buys a media outlet, cuts staff, centralizes content from other outlets so they all say the same things, then lifts prices...
Turns a quality news outlet into an opinion and hear-say out-house.
Then charges a higher premium and expects readers and advertisers to pay...

No wonder his empire and readership crumbles....
 
Just a quick question: how much does the normal paper version of the NYT currently cost for a monthly subscription? (I assume you get a discount for paying monthly rather than buying the paper daily yourself?)

A lot of people are pretty angry about the proposed $30 price but that doesn't mean anything to me until someone can give me a point of reference.

Cheers.
 
DTphonehome said:
Although it seems like a lot, whats $30 a month, really? A Gucci handbag can cost $5k or more. A pair of crocodile Ferregamos can cost $4k. And a simple bottle of champagne with your dinner can cost you over $500. And don't we all spend at least $300 a month gassing up our Maseratis?
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Right, and they will do well selling to that < .01% of the population. And be out of business in 2 years.
 
why is this so difficult?

Make a NY Times app. It's free, but if you want a subscription or single issue, you have to pay "in app" (or Apple could create some iNews store).

Give your regular paper subscribers a digital subscription for free - as a bonus to their subscription. This gets people using the digital version, and is a "value added" to their traditional subscription.

Give others the option of "digital only", but at a price that's reasonable... say $5/month or so (which ought to cover it, as you've eliminated a huge portion of your costs).

Give out only limited content for free - either on the web, or via the app.

Enable people to buy single complete issues for $1... either "today's" or any archive issue. Maybe you could make it 10 issues for $5... use them when you want to...

Why is this so hard to figure out?

I live in Oregon, but would buy the times "on occasion" for $1 with that model. Right now, they're getting $0 from me.

Same model should apply to any other paper, with different amounts... For example, for a small local paper, maybe you get a week for $1, $2 for a month...

Same model should apply to magazines too.
 
$20-$30 for a newspaper will kill it as a potential market. That's about $1 a day, but when you consider $30 outright, that's a huge hit for a dying market anyway.

I wonder what newspapers are doing on the kindle. $5.99 or so for some of them are a great deal.
 
vini-vidi-vici said:
Make a NY Times app. It's free, but if you want a subscription or single issue, you have to pay "in app" (or Apple could create some iNews store).

Give your regular paper subscribers a digital subscription for free - as a bonus to their subscription. This gets people using the digital version, and is a "value added" to their traditional subscription.

Give others the option of "digital only", but at a price that's reasonable... say $5/month or so (which ought to cover it, as you've eliminated a huge portion of your costs).

Give out only limited content for free - either on the web, or via the app.

Enable people to buy single complete issues for $1... either "today's" or any archive issue. Maybe you could make it 10 issues for $5... use them when you want to...

Why is this so hard to figure out?

I live in Oregon, but would buy the times "on occasion" for $1 with that model. Right now, they're getting $0 from me.

Same model should apply to any other paper, with different amounts... For example, for a small local paper, maybe you get a week for $1, $2 for a month...

Same model should apply to magazines too.
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If they do this, they have to pay Apple 30% of each subscription. Further, Apple probably won't permit free subscriptions to current subscribers, because their rules for in-app sales don't permit sales outside Apple's infrastructure.

Hence the whining.
 
Remember what Apple did for the recording industry?

A lot of people think that Apple got the better end of the deal, and this time around executives are trying to avoid the *mistakes* made by the music guys, only to delay the inevitable but not for long, I'm sure. Newspapers and magazines should be embracing the change - like the music recording industry was forced to - instead of fighting it. Newspapers and most magazines are just as worthless as music CD's, meaning aside from the content they provide there's no value.

I'd consider paying $10 a month for the NYT on the iPad, but $20-30? What are they smoking?
 
JakeTheMac said:
Apple should just ban them from the iPad for such stupid thinking.
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Who is the NYT's biggest competitor? I'm not really into dinosaur journalism, so I don't know, but Apple should head on over to the competitor, offer them a decent cut and exclusive national newspaper rights for a time if they have a yearly subscription at say $49.99.

Apple could finally put that blubbering whale of a newspaper our of our misery once and for all!
 
jmadlena said:
I don't blame the newspapers for experimenting with the paid subscription route. It takes a lot of money to run a newspaper, so why shouldn't they get paid? Ads don't take in a lot of revenue until you have an enormous amount of hits.

I know you can find free news on many other sites, but that doesn't mean that newspapers don't deserve to make any money. Also, a lot of times the sites that report the same news get their info from other, more well-known, papers.

If the quality of journalism is there, people will pay for it.
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I would spend more time looking at ads if they were interactive. This is probably true of most people. So I gotta think that that space would be worth more since ultimately these things are about ad revenue. If yiu have a low cost of entry you will have more eyes that will then drive down the subscription cost or it should.

I would prefer some annual fee for multi publication subscriptions. In fact I would rather have my personal info mined and sold than pay $30/mo for a single newspaper. A monthly subscription model will make this a tough sell in my opinion.
 
I can get my news from any number of sources and sites online:

CNN.com
Google News
Reuters
BBC News Online
USATODAY.com
MSNBC
TIME.com
Yahoo News
The Associated Press Mobile
World News
CBS News
ABC News
NBC news
Fox News
Bloomberg.com
Forbes.com

Why would I or anyone else for that matter pay $30, $20, or $10 for day old news and columns/articles that are no better than any of the free sites I just listed? NYT can shove it, $10 should be the max they are going to price it at. What year do they think we are living in? This is not 1984 when the newspaper was important and a big source for news.
 
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