Quote, unquote: Getting paid access right
"We can’t get this halfway right or three-quarters of the way right. We have to get this really, really right."-- Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of the New York Times, on the announcement that the paper will charge for online access to its content starting in 2011. After accessing a certain number of articles free, readers will be asked to pay a flat acess fee. No price was announced.
Labels: pay-for-use
posted by D. B. Scott at
2:02 pm
2 Comments:
It's interesting that they've chosen to make this announcement a full year before implementation. It doesn't seem to make much business sense to me.
Are they hoping to give other outlets enough time to jump on board with the same plan? Doubtful, since most outlets would likely choose a wait-and-see policy before following suit.
Or are they wanting to use this next year in order to suss out the response to this move? Which is going to be universally negative, b/c that's the normal human response to change, especially change we have to pay for. But that doesn't mean the model won't succeed once implemented, so again, why bother announcing so ridiculously early? All they're doing is setting themselves up for a lot of very bad press (and potentially scaring themselves away from this decision), and for another company to come in and lure people away by creating another, better (from the consumer perspective) business model.
Sorry for the long, long comment, I'm just very perplexed by this move.
maybe they're hoping to get feedback on the right numbers - how many free articles before you have to pay? and are your freebies counted per lifetime or per visit?
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