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'The New York Times' Announces Digital Access With In App Subscriptions

tigres said:
Well let me say it like this:
I have the BBC app on iPhone
I have the BBC app on iPad

they are both of NO charge, and the app is beautifully delivered with nice eye candy as well.

Is that OK now?
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We in the UK pay for the BBC via licence fee which costs about $200 a year. We get seven ad free TV and 8 national Radio stations (with dozens of regional), all streamed via the iplayer listen again for free, not to mention excellent documentaries and learning resources and the busiest and one of the best news websites worldwide. That unlike the NYT is worth the money!
 
Swift said:
Can you multiply? 15 x 13 (4-week periods) = $195 a year.
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Can you read?

From the article:
Standard digital pricing is set at $15 per four-week period for full access to NYTimes.com and access through a smartphone app such as on the iPhone. Those seeking to pair NYTimes.com access with iPad app access will be charged $20 per four-week period, while those wishing to have complete access across NYTimes.com, iPhone and iPad will be charged $35 per four-week period. Introductory pricing specials will be available at the service's launch.
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$15 for iPhone access x 13 (4-week periods) = $195 /year
$20 for iPad access x 13 (4-week periods) = $260 /year
$35 for iPhone + iPad access x 13 (4-week periods) = $455 /year

Way too expensive, I just deleted the app from my iPad. I pay $35 /year for ESPN Insider access which includes subscriptions to the print and iPad digital version of the ESPN Magazine. The Daily is of course only $52 /year. $260 /year for the iPad is just stupid. The NYT is not THAT good.
 
mrzeigler said:
Why? They weren't making all that much money off you coming to their website and getting their news for free.

As a journalist who has unwittingly helped enrich Google, I found it quite ironic when a few weeks ago Google was indignant after a sting operation showed that Bing was stealing its search results. How DARE that evil company take what Google's hard-working employees had produced and then try to profit off of it!

It's interesting that those who excoriate people who use pirated software often feel entitled to free news.
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Google did NOT profit off of newspapers. Google simply put information easier to find. With your logic, I can say newspapers profit off of pain/suffering of innocent people as readership goes when there are disasters, like in Japan now.
 
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sososowhat said:
This is a big deal: it applies to their regular website as well! Print alone is dying, so if they're to survive they need to charge for digital. Online ads might support some types of organizations, but not a global news organization. If it's a choice between NYTimes dying or paying for content: I'll pay for content. That said, the pricing seems absurdly high. They seem to be trying to force people to buy the hard-copy, but that seems to me to be old-school thinking.

Here's a link to the Editor's letter: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/opinion/l18times.html
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How did you reach that conclusion, if applications like farmville can make over a million a month in ad revenue alone I think a reputable newspaper with far greater reach and exposure could do just fine if they actually catered towards the model, drop all the AP sources that gets posted everywhere else and concentrate on what they do thats unique. There are far too many other sources for "news" the value of NY Times is investigative reporting and editorial content which also faces still competition from other far cheaper sources. Unfortunately they continue to drastically overvalue their worth and keep tweaking their model usually for the worse, if they cant figure out how to properly compete there is simply no way they can survive.
 
ladeer said:
what do you mean "this day and age?" do you know especially this day and age, there is so much information available, we are really living in an information explosion where 99.99% of them is junk noise? it's more and more difficult and inefficient to distinguish quality content from rehashed articles, fake news site, auto-generated blog post all w/ the intention to drive service engine optimization and ad sales.

then there are those news outlet like local tv stations, CNN.com, BBC.com, huffington post, etc. Their content quality is several notch below the rank of WSJ and NYT. Just look at the kind of stuff getting coverage, their reporting angle, and vocabularies used on CNN.com, there is a reason their content is free.

Trust me just because you don't want to pay for quality content doesn't mean others won't. WSJ has successfully charge its content for years, and I personally pay $495/year for its Professional service. When the information I receive is helping me to make large sum of investment decision on daily basis, $495 is just chomp change like commissions and fees for cost of trading.
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Good for you. BUT how many people in this world are in position to profit handsomely from investments to the point where they are willing to pay $500/year for a newspaper. There are such people but not millions of them.
 
That is crazy expensive. Especially because the NYT.com includes flash content. Like the guts of the recent story on how a nuclear reactor works. Pay that much for content I can't view on my iPad2. Double NYT Fail! The Daily is also a fail. BBC I will pay for as soon as the new iPad subscription app is available in the USA.
 
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TallManNY said:
So let me see, subscribe to the paper addition of NYTimes in NYC and it is $5.85 a week or $305 a year. That gets me full access to website, ipad and iphone. But if subscribe to full digital access, it is $35 per four weeks or $455 a year. Boy that makes a lot of sense.
Can I subscribe to the paper and tell them just not to deliver the paper?
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Remember Apple takes 30%, so its actually $319 that goes to them. They are quite cleverly bundling the apps for free with their paper.

They want you to get the paper to get the apps for free, they don't want you to buy the subscription from the app store.
 
I have long stopped subscribing to printed media, starting actually with the NYT in the 1990s. Seems I was way ahead of the times back then. (no pun intended).

I think that unless someone has to get some info that is available only in the NYT there is absolutely no need to pay hundreds of $ to have access to an exclusive tiny fraction of the news available on the internet when the remaining 99.99% is free or dirt cheap.
 
15" Aluminum Powerbook/MacBook Pro?!

No one has mentioned the fact that there is a 15" Aluminum Powerbook or MacBook Pro pictured alongside the iPad and iPhone?

Stuck out like a sore thumb leaving me scratching my head thinking, "Huh?!"
 
Buh-bye New York Times! March 28 will be remembered as the day you passed on.

A friend of mine was a reporter from the NY Times, she said the spin came from editorial and above. They told her how a story should be framed, who the good guys were and who the bad guys were - it had little to do with finding the truth. And if she tried to tell the truth they told her to re-write it their way or walk. And if you notice, the "stories" from the big media always has a similar spin.

Most people gave up on the mainstream media a long time ago. When I would read a story at the blogger and alternative news sites it would eventual show up in a mainstream press 6 months later and then be spun into some awful "human interest story."

It isn't soon enough that big media goes away!
 
Granted I only read the first 4 pages of comments responding to this post but...

Everyone is doing the math based on how much it costs per year. And the total price does seem a touch high when you think in that unit. However, if I compare the cost per day, it is cheaper for me to pay $35 per month or only $1.25 per day to access the Times from all my iGadgets and iMac. I live west of Seattle (yes, there is land west of the Puget Sound) and the printed Times costs me $2 per day and $7 on Sunday. I live on the edge of home subscription boundaries so I have to buy it from a local bookstore.

Looking at those prices, the Times' pricing scheme makes sense. Yes, I know: YMMV. Not everyone lives where I do (and that's why I live here).

But I do not like the lack of flexibility. I would rather be able to pay for a block of days and not worry about whether or not they are consecutive. Or allow me to pay for a single day. I read like a fiend when Egypt revolted and the tsunami hit but then coasted a few days because I had no time to read. Don't make me pay for the days I do not access the site. Let me buy my block of days and use them when I can. It's how I buy the newspaper now: on days when I know I can read it.
 
chelsel said:
It's not like their website isn't still up and running and they've had a paywall for years. They probably believe they will reach a greater market than they currently do and that will make up for any revenue hit, and they are probably right.
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No, they had a paywall years ago and then got rid of it. Since then, until now, all you've needed is a free login to access anything on the site. Now they're trying to make you pay for a subscription for access via both the website and their i-apps (but of course you'll still pay again for the content the way you do currently - by being bombarded by ads, that's not going to stop).
 
I've stopped using the iPad NYTimes app because both the Times' daily email of top articles, which I check every morning, and Pulse newsreader take me to web versions--which I find easlier to read than the antiseptic-looking app versions. So I can see no reason to pay extra to use that app.

I do use the iPhone app often, though, mostly on the subway. I'm glad the days of trying to fold an ink-stained broadsheet while holding onto a pole are long gone. As a daily reader of many Times articles, I have no problem paying $15/mo for web & iPhone access. Writers and editors deserve to be paid, and the Times is a huge, global operation--I'm sure ad revenue doesn't pay all the bills. Providing news is a business, not a charity.
 
One thing that Apple knows how to do is to price things. iPad 499/599/699; 3G add 129 - black or white. One sentence just explained the pricing on 18 SKU.

The Times is such a joke, their pricing strategy reminds one of the medication regimen of an 80 year old. Who even takes this relic seriously anymore?

Perhaps they can show how trendy that are and integrate MySpace and Friendster into their app. Seeking what a relic they are, I'm sure these has-been sites will be in there somewhere.
 
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