Comments on: NY Times' Brave Change: Opening Archives

By: Gene Koo

Gene Koo — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 21:24:11 +0000

I’m not being facetious when I say that one of the benefits of Times Select was taking Maureen Dowd, et.al. off the “most emailed” lists. In the age of the blogosphere, I find their paid pundits no more informative, and far less timely and relevant, than their blogger counterparts. When I go to the Times, I want to read news and smart analysis, not polemics, so — minor as it might seem — filtering them out was a nice side-effect of the content wall.

Access to the archives far outweighs this small, unintended, benefit, of course.

By: Richard Farrell : If You Can’t Fight ‘Em, Join ‘Em: The New York Times Shuts Down Times Select

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 16:27:09 +0000

[...] Dan Gilmor’s commentary on this move, click here. Posted by Richard Farrell on Friday, September 21, 2007, at 9:26 am, and filed under The return [...]

By: Bill Densmore

Bill Densmore — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 01:32:05 +0000

There’s a middle ground:
http://newshare.typepad.com/newshare/2007/09/old-new-comprom.html

By: MediaChannel.org

MediaChannel.org — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 17:00:11 +0000

[...] Dan Gillmor thinks they will do very well there: Presumably, each article will have a perma-link. If so, watch what [...]

By: Rollo

Rollo — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 19:42:17 +0000

At last. I will now go to NYT’s site to see what this Krugman guy has to say. If I really wanted to, I could have found out already without paying a cent. But I didn’t, and so NYTimes gained nothing and lost a reader into the bargain. And that is the point.

By: Karl

Karl — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 17:23:37 +0000

About time

By: Undercurrent

Undercurrent — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 14:10:24 +0000

End of an experiment, start of another at the NYT…

So the rumours/unnamed sources had it right: The New York Times really is dropping Times Select. Not only that, they will also open their archives all the way back to 1987. From the announcement letter: Since we launched TimesSelect in 2005, the online…

By: NYT Retires TimesSelect Pay Wall » netZoo.net | WOOZradio

NYT Retires TimesSelect Pay Wall » netZoo.net | WOOZradio — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 10:28:01 +0000

[...] NYT;s letter to readers — the Pay Wall comes down at midnight EDT on the 19th. Also, Gillmor, Jarvis, and Ingram [...]

By: Jon Garfunkel

Jon Garfunkel — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 10:10:11 +0000

All true, but remember that the Times is getting an average, per print subscriber, of $500 in subsciption fees and $1000 in advertising to reach that subscriber. No one has any solid numbers on how that will be replaced.

Ad revenue in the “Other” category was $4m in August (I presume that’s from NYT.com). We’ll see how the Sept. and Oct. numbers come out.

As for missing from the public conversation, of the snapshots of BlogPulse during TimesSelect, the Times columnists were still leading their counterparts at the WaPo, WSJ, etc. I presumed that most leading bloggers either (a) subscribe to the print Times, (b) bought into TimesSelect, or (c) found other means to read the columns that interested them.

While this may signal the end of tiered content for paying subscribers, it shouldn’t close the door on tiered offerings. As a paying subscriber, I’d still like *some* online benefit, like less intrusive ads or unmoderated comment posting. Mobile users sure as heck should start demanding the former.

By: Hans Suter

Hans Suter — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 09:19:58 +0000

“About two and a half years ago,” at the same time I asked Martin Wolf of the Financial Times the same question and got the same answer. So today I asked him again. That’s his answer: Watch this space! Martin Wolf .