Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

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

Free subscription offer

I read nytimes.com daily. I just clicked on an article and was offered a free subscription to nytimes.com and their mobile app (not ipad) for the rest of 2011. The offer was sponsored by Lincoln. Oh and this is my very first post.
 
Wow, 60$ extra subscription fee per year to use an iPad App instead of Safari? That better be some kickass app.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8F190 Safari/6533.18.5)

At $15/month, with so many free news sources, both better and worse, price seems steep.
 
duervo said:
Awesome. Thanks. :)
Click to expand...

dingamahoo said:
This also seems like a great solution. I'll probably opt for this.
Click to expand...

Duervo and Dingamahoo, you are certainly welcome. It looks like a lot of people missed my post. For those of us who love the New York Times and want the full, unlimited electronic access, the method I suggested is definitely the way to go. I hope that you both enjoy! Best wishes to you!
 
I talked to the NYT rep at MacWorld this year and she said they were going to be doing this. Still, I'm kinda bummed that it's now official. :( I like their iPad app and have been a long time reader of the Times online. I guess I'm going to have be getting my news elsewhere starting later this month, though.... Too bad.
 
I see an extreme amount of whining on here, most of it about paying for news. First of all, do many of you read 20 or more stories per month from The New York Times? If you don't, stop complaining.

Secondly, get used to this. As someone who works for a newspaper, we like getting paid for the work we do. It's fine to argue over whether a price is too low or too high, but the powers that be are remembering that people used to pay for news.

As for The Daily, get ready for that thing to bomb big time. It's selling right now because it's shiny, new and cheap. After the front-page "Oh Hill No" thing I saw today, I remembered that it is a News Corp. product and is already turning into trash journalism. A whole front-page story based on an anonymous source. You need not pay for that, my friends.

Everybody might as well get used to paying for news. These walls are going to go up. The only question is how quickly and how high. I think the NYT needs maybe another tier for people who read more than 20 articles per month but not the entire darn thing. Some months I might just barely top that. I agree that it's not quite a good deal if you're in that ballpark, but if you read the whole darn thing it might not be so bad.

NOTE: I just realized that the app access is a little different. Top News is free, but everything else requires a subscription. I may have to go in through Safari since I mostly read one or two columnists per week.
 
Ieo said:
Support it through ads....No way in hell am I paying for a subscription at that rate. There are too many free sources of news out there for me to pay $260 a year (iPad + online only rate) for NYT.
Click to expand...

Don't worry, you will still get the ads I'm sure.
 
Michael CM1 said:
I see an extreme amount of whining on here ... As someone who works for a newspaper, we like getting paid for the work we do....
Click to expand...

The papers, including the NYT, are in a death spiral because they haven't figured out how to deal with the internet. But, as the Times is about to learn, charging a usurious fee isn't the solution.
 
So if they plan to start charging me $15 every 4 weeks for their iPhone app, will they fix it so it stops crashing almost every time I launch it?
 
The introductory pricing is inflated. The jump in cost to use both iPad and iPhone is absurd, it should be $15 for web, $20 for web + iOS devices and I would expect this will be the case in time. Presumably pricing is set so as not to undermine their print subscriptions and, for the time being, that's likely a wise business move. As paid content becomes the standard pricing will find an agreed upon equilibrium.

With that said I'm not in the least upset to see the transition from ad supported to subscription based revenues. There needs to be a greater differentiation between bloggers and journalists, writers and ramblers, opinions and facts; and that line should be marked in dollars.

Though the people critical of the transition may account for a significant portion of web traffic I would be skeptical of the click through revenues generated by these same individuals who are unwilling to pay for their news. Advertisers obviously set out to target as large an audience as possible but ultimately the value is in those affected to spend. If I'm the type of business that advertises in the NYT then I'm cognizant of this and pay accordingly to target these readers.

The people so quickly turned off would undoubtedly not have been the people purchasing print copies of the Times pre internet so how much weight do your opinions carry? $10 a month would be the sweet spot for me. Time will tell what the eventual price point will become.
 
ferrous said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8F190 Safari/6533.18.5)

At $15/month, with so many free news sources, both better and worse, price seems steep.
Click to expand...

..a really good reason why it seems this is destined to fail.
 
H. Flower said:
Apple is much to blame for the price.

Now would be a perfect time for them to back off of 30%.
Click to expand...

That is why I am thinking the NYT is currently busy writting an HTML5 version of their app. As soon as enough browsers support HTML5, businesses that don't need an app store to be "discovered" will be able to go back to a world where they are not giving Apple 30% of everything they produce.
 
DrRadon said:
Wow, 60$ extra subscription fee per year to use an iPad App instead of Safari? That better be some kickass app.
Click to expand...

Based on my experience with NYT app (only app on my iphone that I have to try to open about 3 times before it actually opens) on my iphone 3gs, i wouldn't expect much.
 
I'm wondering if press operator and associated staff unions are behind the pricing structure. Maybe they could only get a union agreement for electronic delivery options if the electronic subscription would not undercut the print version?
 
Are you kidding?

Are you going to charge me more for an iMac v. a netbook? Make it device independent and cut the price to less than $<10.

Otherwise, wither away gray lady, wither away. This is time for new media.
 
I wonder if Google Reader/RSS in general is considered to be social media? That's how I read the NYT now, anyway. It's too cumbersome to try to figure out what articles I haven't read by visiting the front page.

Also, guys, you don't want the large papers to wither away. I took a look at the local local O.C Register and I didn't like it. The paper was thin, had short articles, and all national news was from the A.P or other wire services. On the other hand, the L.A Times recently just published a six-part series about construction waste at the LA community college school district. That piece took 18 months of reviewing records and interviewing people to come up with the findings. It's a service to us the taxpayer to see how our money is being spent (or misspent). Last year they exposed the Bell city salary scandal. And I doubt a smaller paper or an online-only paper has the resources to do such an investigation.
 
boraxatude said:
I read nytimes.com daily. I just clicked on an article and was offered a free subscription to nytimes.com and their mobile app (not ipad) for the rest of 2011. The offer was sponsored by Lincoln. Oh and this is my very first post.
Click to expand...
Me two. But then it said I already had the subscription although my account shows no subscriptions.
UPDATE
I called customer care and they knew nothing about it. I offered to send them screen captures and the URL but they had no access to email.
 
Last edited:
I just clicked on a Lincoln advertisement on nytimes.com and I got free access for the rest of 2011! :)
 
SailorMike said:
Are you going to charge me more for an iMac v. a netbook? Make it device independent and cut the price to less than $<10.

Otherwise, wither away gray lady, wither away. This is time for new media.
Click to expand...

seriously. is nyt going to charge me more if i use a 30" LCD on a Mac Pro to read their stuff?
 
dba7dba said:
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.
Click to expand...

Yeah, sure, Google and other search engines haven't profited from newspapers. They only sell ads based around search results of information that other people produce.

Don't get me wrong, I don't absolve the newspaper publishers for terribly screwing up the industry's transition from print to web. They made a costly mistake in providing full, free access for so long that now nearly everyone balks at the idea of paying for content. As a consequence, newspapers have folded and thousands of journalists lost their jobs.

BTW, for your analogy to work, the innocent people in Japan would have had to been in an industry that produced (and profited from) pain/suffering.
 
mrzeigler said:
Yeah, sure, Google and other search engines haven't profited from newspapers. They only sell ads based around search results of information that other people produce.

Don't get me wrong, I don't absolve the newspaper publishers for terribly screwing up the industry's transition from print to web. They made a costly mistake in providing full, free access for so long that now nearly everyone balks at the idea of paying for content. As a consequence, newspapers have folded and thousands of journalists lost their jobs.

BTW, for your analogy to work, the innocent people in Japan would have had to been in an industry that produced (and profited from) pain/suffering.
Click to expand...

Dragging google in didn't help your argument imo. You make it sound like what Goole (and other search engines) accomplished doesn't give them the right to make profit. What they accomplished was something new and not done before. I don't think you can simply say "search engines made $ off of what others produced". What they did and do is far more than that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back