The ill-conceived New York Times TimesSelect program, which locked most of its archives and op-ed columns behind a for-pay barrier, will be euthanized tonight at midnight. Their rather evasive public reasons (the program “met expectation” but how could they have known Google and Yahoo would drive so much traffic to their site, claims that one hopes don’t represent their reporters’ analytical skills) suggest a few more important truths:
- The traditional subscription model is sinking beneath the waves of demands for granular, custom content that has a community heart. On principle, I am unlikely to pay for access to an archived article. I might be willing to pay for customized content. I would be even more likely to pay for the ability to participate in a smart, literate community. But $5 for the occasional article a link takes me to? Or a monthly fee just in case I need to access such an article? Neither makes much sense.
- While the New York Times has some fine op-ed columnists, their numbers are dwarfed by their equally good– and freely available– counterparts in various online publications and blogs. The idea that there are only a few dozen elite commentators available was an illusion supported only by an artificial scarcity created by the mainstream media. Most internet pundits are horrible. But when you have numbers that vast to choose from…
- It isn’t an act of generosity to make the archives until 1922 accessible… that material is already in the public domain and the NYT realizes that the traffic that will be driven there by search engine and by link is more valuable than the random payments could ever be.
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Agreed that Times Select was ill-conceived from the start. Commodity content gets commodity pricing, so the price of news goes to zero. Great for the consumer… unless, of course, our unwillingness to pay for content makes it impossible for the unique, high-quality, low-volume, long-form publishers to make a living, in which case we all lose.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if the New York Times, which holds itself up as a bastion of editorial integrity and quality journalism, helped kill both?
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In fairness, the scarcity on which the print business model relied wasn’t always illusory. But times, even in NY, change. ::grin::
I wouldn’t argue otherwise, but TimesSelect is only two years old– I think the writing was clearly visible on the wall to all but ostriches well before that
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