12/22/24
March 19, 2011
New York Times to begin charging for online access: On March 28th, the NY Times will institute a pay wall and begin charging frequent readers of its content for online access via digital subscriptions.
If they are successful and other content providers follow suit, the economic landscape of online content will change.
How will this affect SpoFi and the linking to online content?
When more online content sources have pay walls, SpoFi members may be able to continue following links to content without having to pay for the access, but will this coming transition end up imposing restrictions and/or an economic burden on SpoFi itself?
posted by beaverboard to general at 10:50 AM - 5 comments
Oh no... Two dull media dinosaurs are taking their balls and going home.
The world will move on.
They will not be missed.
posted by Drood at 03:27 PM on March 20, 2011
You get something like 20 articles free per month before the pay wall kicks in. Just delete your cookies and start fresh at #21.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 10:53 PM on March 20, 2011
The end result will be that the Times gets linked to less often eventually eroding their readership and authority.
As someone who works for one of those dinosaurs, it is also disheartening to see that the greatest assets online are those like the Huff-Po which aggregates our content. We cook the meal, give it away, and then she serves it in her restaurant.
What will the aggregators aggregate when they have finally killed off all of the dinosaurs that fueled their sites? I like to think of it as "Peak Content". Say what you want about Dowd, Krugman, etc... But without these voices, a good bit of the discourse on the internet would not happen. Agreeing or criticizing, they are prominent voices who spark the debate.
Internet advertising simply does not pay for the cost of producing content. When companies like the Times go down, aggregators like the Huff-Po are going to find it's not so easy to make money while actually paying people to make content.
Print operations also had virtual monopolies and obscene profit margins for a century... Don't feel too bad for them.
posted by LostInDaJungle at 11:28 AM on March 22, 2011
When companies like the Times go down, aggregators like the Huff-Po are going to find it's not so easy to make money while actually paying people to make content.
I'll believe that when I see it. There will be less high-quality content if we lose media outlets like the Times, but there's far more news being produced today than in the pre-web years when I worked at a newspaper. Huffington Post gladly steals from amateurs.
posted by rcade at 09:38 PM on March 22, 2011
They are doing the same thing the WSJ does and letting those who link through google or another search engine read it for free. I think people are just going to find a way to post links through search engines.