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

AnalyzeThis said:
Thanks Steve for price hike on eBooks. What next? Free news for money. Nice. Keep up a good work on your magical MAXIPAD!!!

If somebody was smart enough to pay for MAXIPAD, it should be alright to pay $20-$30 green backs for free news for each news provider. I do not see anything wrong with it. Nothing personal, it is business folks.:D
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Actually the NYTimes already announced that they were going to limit online access to their content (X number of articles per day without a subscription) way before the iPad was announced.

Also, Amazon has kept the $9.99 price point by discounting the publishers set price. This is easy for them to do when they get 65% royalties. Since the iPad was announced publishers have another option so now Amazon has changed their royalty system in response. Amazon was giving the discount in order to get people to buy into their system.
 
cmaier said:
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.
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If they had an iNews rack, it could work - they can set it up however they want... everything else is negotiable. It's just a matter of getting the software right, and that's as much Apple's job as the content providers.
 
Cost

The cost is the killer...
To access the web via 3G will cost from 10 per month...
Add to that one or more subscriptions... a 30/month subscription is madness!
If a person paid 30 per subscription then after two or three content providers we would all be broke!
The subscriber models will be much lower, otherwise NO ONE will bother and Rupert will finally be bedded in debt! Once Rupert is out we may finally get quality back into print media.
Go on Newscorp... try to charge huge subscription fees... we dare ya!
 
ShiftyPig said:
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.



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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no you missed every post on this site. ny times and every other news site website will not be free anymore.
 
haha. have fun with the iPad guys. On top of the $499 ad 3G payments, you'll be paying separate fees to subscribe to each content provider's content.

You guys are going to waste your money.
 
Apollo7011 said:
All I have to say is...screw you William Randolph Hurst!! Even though you may not be alive, your legacy has screwed with us, and still is even in the digital age!
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That's Hearst, not Hurst, my old newspaper employer at the L.A. Herald Examiner.

Before everyone gets all hot under the collar, remember that the story is only reporting a turf war, not a decision. Having worked for metro dailies, and having been both an ad director and circulation director at one, I'm not at all surprised. Turf wars are the norm.

Everyone knows, especially here, that print is dying. But if you are in charge of circulation you also know that your days are numbers. Can you blame them for fighting back?

Anyway as I say over at TNM, this will get resolved in favor of the interactive people (assuming the story is even true).

But if the circulation people win then we can all come back here and have a good laugh.
 
"Rather uncompetitive" is putting it politely.

I'd be willing to pay $5-10 for a newspaper subscription on a device like the iPad. Right now I browse to the websites to read all the news I want free. It works, but it's inelegant. I can handle inelegant, but I'm willing to pay a couple of bucks -- not much more -- for a more "stylish" reading experience.

Of course, ultimately the market will dictate what pricing they can charge. So go ahead and charge $30/month if you want... when nobody comes calling, drop the price to $10 and see what happens.
 
I would love to pay to get the NYT if it is reasonable.

It is worth it and I like paying to support a good product. However, if it is $30 per month for a digital copy, forget it. I could see paying $10-$12, but more than that and I will skip it and never think twice. Even $20 is too much. Perhaps they could have an ad-free version and premium subscribers could get that. That is the way to go, but I don't need another monthly bill like that.
 
I can't believe most of the posts that I am reading here. First of all, news will not be free forever. While you can certainly cruise over to a number of free websites to get your news today, that won't be possible in the future. The same people who believe that downloading pirated music is OK will continue to believe that news is free. Someone has to pay for a quality reporter and analyst. If you want my 12 year old daughter to rehash your news, fine. That will be free. If you want to read a quality newspaper, then you should be prepared to pay for it.

I do not see the online version as a supplement to my printed newspaper for much longer - I see it as a replacement. Thus, if you pay $10/month for a printed paper, you should be prepared to pay close to that for an online version. During the transition, I would like to get both printed and online for the same price, but in the next couple of years I see that I will need to make a choice and subscribe to only one.

Perhaps there is a way to get an individual article if that is all you want to read - maybe that could cost $0.10 to $0.15 per article. Maybe the website can provide you with the article's title for free and then you decide whether or not to pay for it.

I currently pay $21/month for a delivered version of the LA Times. I am sure that the NYT is more than this - probably close to $30/month. I have no problem paying for my LA Times subscription in print, why would I object to paying a similar fee to receive it delivered digitally?
 
Thex1138 said:
The cost is the killer...
To access the web via 3G will cost from 10 per month...
Add to that one or more subscriptions... a 30/month subscription is madness!
If a person paid 30 per subscription then after two or three content providers we would all be broke!
The subscriber models will be much lower, otherwise NO ONE will bother and Rupert will finally be bedded in debt! Once Rupert is out we may finally get quality back into print media.
Go on Newscorp... try to charge huge subscription fees... we dare ya!
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No one is forcing you to pay for 3G.
 
cmaier said:
No one is forcing you to pay for 3G.
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Nope but if you are traveling and want to read content posted then the user has to wait until within range of a hot spot if the provider has one near by and they are in the area long enough...
Roaming with 3G all that is needed is 3 or 2.5G...
 
rabber said:
I currently pay $21/month for a delivered version of the LA Times. I am sure that the NYT is more than this - probably close to $30/month. I have no problem paying for my LA Times subscription in print, why would I object to paying a similar fee to receive it delivered digitally?
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Because in many ways the digital version is an inferior product. You can't lend it to a friend, divide up the sections with a friend, leave it in the break room at work for others to read after you, print out pages to save for later, etc. You might not be able to read your copy if you save it for a few years because the DRM server or the reader may be obsolete.

You might not even be able to copy/paste (trust me - I was working with one of these publishers and they wanted me to disable copy/paste. I told them I wasn't interested in partnering with them after that).
 
For all those who mention what they get for "free"

Many like to point out that they can get the content and news they want for "free", but I submit that there is a heavier price to pay in the future when we go that route. If we don't support quality in our society, we will pay eventually. We already are.
 
I hate to bring politics into this, but this is exactly how disconnected the liberal media is.
 
True, his point about the speed was a bit off.
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Agree with both of you. After your explination that the ipad version of NYT will be constantly updating, I take back my line that you will have to wait until the next day to get your news....but you have to agree with everything else I said. Like others are saying, there will ALWAYS be free news on the internet. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just kidding themselves. It's the internet! We will always be able to find out anything we need to know on the internet, for free. There will never be a need to subscribe to a newspaper on the ipad.
 
Thex1138 said:
Nope but if you are traveling and want to read content posted then the user has to wait until within range of a hot spot if the provider has one near by and they are in the area long enough...
Roaming with 3G all that is needed is 3 or 2.5G...
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If you are traveling you might not be able to buy a physical copy of your periodical of choice, either. What's your point?
 
ShiftyPig said:
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.
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that is because people don't want to read that stuff on a notebook or pc.

That is why a device will be so game changing, because it provides a format and a dimension that is compatible with how a lot of people want to casually read things. A laptop and desktop are not conducive to that, and thus not a good choice, even if it was free.

I will pay a decent price for a subscription to my local newspaper, and won't pay a cent to view it on website. They are not even remotely the same thing.
 
dwd3885 said:
haha. have fun with the iPad guys. On top of the $499 ad 3G payments, you'll be paying separate fees to subscribe to each content provider's content.

You guys are going to waste your money.
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Wow, I don't get people who thinks iPad is going to be exclusive to the high prices.

You do realize it has nothing to do with iPad and they are going to do the same thing on the web and the rest of the devices? Netbook have 3G as well and you pay for it monthly, some of the ISP charge far more than 15$ a month. Don't think it won't happen on other devices as well.

Absolutely moot.

Oh by the way, Kindle is going to have higher prices as well. Don't blame Jobs on this, he offered a choice, the book publishers took it and forced it on Amazon. Amazon tried their way but failed.
 
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