In my personal opinion, I think the New York Times must have a death wish of sorts if they want to charge such exorbitant fees for full access to the contents of their newspaper via the Internet.
This will effectively finish one of the world's most widely read and respected papers. The late Abe Rosenthal--probably the best Editor-in-Chief the New York Times ever had--must be rolling over in his grave....
How is the pricing exorbitant? I used to pay $5 or $6 a month to read the Times on weekdays only, some 40 years ago. For it to be $20 now? Bargain!
There is no free lunch. If we are what we eat, then we are also what we feed our minds. I'll take the fresh banquet of The New York Times over the rewarmed hash of Google News, and find something in my budget to give up in order to afford it.
I don't think ol' Abe Rosenthal is spinning in his grave. He's probably thinking what I'm thinking: it's about time they charged for the paper online. They should have stuck with their earlier paywall experiment, messed around with it more, not just box in the columnists but put the whole thing behind a paywall and tell people "Hey. This stuff cost blood, sweat, tears and plenty dough to produce, so it cannot be free by any stretch of your selfish and cramped imagination."
And please all you people who posit some difference between stealing a truckload of DVDs and pirating some downloaded software, and who think listening to or reading a digital work for free makes sense because someone already got paid to create the original, do spare me. Go walk in the shoes of a Dexter Filkins sometime, or John Burns, and then ask yourself if you are entitled to read an account of what they experienced -- what they risked their lives to report-- for the grand price of zero while you suck down that latte.
The very idea of having been able to read the work of The New York Times' reporters for nothing all this time is obscene, actually. Obscene.
Fear of stockholders and their short term profit mentality has just about killed off the "free" newspapers still worth reading. Quite a few of them still have a good product. It needs to be priced for consumers to have to acknowledge its value. If you don't want to pay for it, maybe you are not actually a newspaper consumer. There ARE newspaper consumers out here, and we will pay for the thing. That's the lesson of papers such as The Financial Times, and magazines like The Economist, The New Yorker, The New Republic.
The New York Times is stepping into good company with their plan. I can hardly wait to sign up. This time please God they will have the backbone to stick with the plan and tell the shareholders (of which I am one) to love it, shove it or short it and go to hell. I think the Times' plan is fair and well thought out to succeed.
