Would You Pay for Mobile News Access?
The financially troubled New York Times is 
reportedly considering charging for access to the paper on mobile platforms. Martin Nisenholtz, head of the Times digital operations, said the Times is considering charging subscription fees for access to the paper from mobile devices such as the iPhone.
“Mobile offers a better opportunity for paid content,” Nisenholtz said in his remarks. “For publishers to offer their content for free in the mobile platform forever without getting paid very much money, I don’t think it’s going to be tenable.”
While it is understandable that mainstream media is struggling to come up with revenue opportunities to replace falling ad revenue, I’m not sure that a mobile access subscription is going to be a viable alternative. Consumers have become conditioned to grab their news online where it is free and it will be a hard sell to convince them otherwise. Would you pay to subscribe to the NYT on your phone?
Nope. I wouldn’t pay to get news on my phone.
There’s really nothing that the NYT offers that can’t be had already for free.
Nope. Too much free news elseware on the web.
Maybe if the New York Times would write stories that were actually true and about things people are interested in then maybe people would actually buy the paper and their revenue would go up. Just an idea…
Nope.
No.
So, it’s free through desktop/laptop access, but if access through a smartphone, it’d cost?
More likely, we’ll see internet-based news services start charging subscription fees for access across the board, I think.
Except the people will revolt…
All is takes is for one site to put up the news for free, and the other sites will be screwed.
It makes far more sense for the NYT to try to differentiate themselves through op/ed and feature pieces that people would want to pay for, rather than rehashed AP pieces that you can get anywhere.
Well said, though I think this train of thought is a good starting point and needs to evolve from there.
The problem with that is, you can get the NYT editorial slant anywhere in the mainstream press.
Nope. Not going to pay for it, I’ll get my news from somewhere else.
Maybe but it would have to be a nominal fee.
People still read the NYT!??!!?! Oh, yeah, that’s why they are suffering financially… well that and their pitiful excuse for a writing staff.
I’m on the fence about this. I don’t really want the newspapers to die and yet I can’t really justify paying 300+/year for a subscription. I do subscribe to magazines (the New Yorker for example) and buy a boatload of paperback and tech books (that’s soon to change with my new KindleDX coming next week) so I’m not on the ‘everything must be free’ wagon.
but newspapers are a weird world anymore. I like the feel of a newspaper but don’t have time to really read one anymore.
I did subscribe to the WSJ back when they had a paper + net access rate in the ~50bucks/year. I felt that that was a good deal. When it jumped to ~150 I didn’t think that the value was there. (the numbers are fuzzy since this was last year).
What I would pay for would be some sort of revenue sharing between a couple of the paper companies, something like a go-between so that I could get the NYT, Bloomberg, WSJ, etc on all of my devices (web, iphone, kindle) for a decent rate with a good interface. (I do like the NYT layout, etc)
Of course the news should allow customization, etc. Even better would be the same article side by side from the multiple sources.
I would do 9.99/month for a group of papers, and the sunday comics of course
now I just need to get a couple million folks to join me.
i do think that it’s important to have multiple news sources not tied back to the same owners/agenda.
a big No from me.
Why would I want to know what’s happening in New York? Or Times Square, for that matter?
No way!!!
I don’t even read the NYT right now and it is free. I definently wouldn’t pay for their “news”.
Ah… NO!
All such a fee would do is drive down their already dwindling readership – which would further reduce ad revenue.
If they want to make money: Improve the CONTENT.
(Stop looking for magic pills)
For some “news” I would pay a fee. For example the Wall Street Journal. Having spent 25+ years in the financial industry the WSJ is pretty much required reading. Not so much for the information content because almost all of it is available from other sources for free. It is the fact that all your peers are reading it and constantly referring to it in conversation and work. For that reason alone I subscribed. Plus it is convenient to have it all consolidated in one place. Of course as soon as it was available, I went to the online version, but I still paid for it.
For general news I would have to say no, I would not pay for it. Just to many other sources that have it available for free.
Of course I would. Why? Because I’d like to keep the NYT and other good newspapers in operation. I think a lot of people who say “I’ll just find the news elsewhere for free” fail to realize that newspapers are really news gathering organizations. When those organizations die, you won’t get your news elsewhere for free because there will not be much news to consume but evermore opinion.
True, newspapers really screwed themselves when they embraced this troublesome idea that content should be free just because it is accessed online. They have finally opened their eyes, and consumers of news will have to do the same.
To be clear, I am not advocating that everyone pay for the NY Times. (Opinions about that paper certainly vary!) I am strongly advocating that the majority of people who consume news pay for some part of it, preferably via a subscription to a product tied to an organization that can fund large domestic and international news-gathering operations or local operations, whether it is the NYT, WSJ, or other paper you prefer. Your subscription to the WSJ helps me access it though I have no subscription. My subscription to the NYT helps fund other people’s access to it even though they may not subscribe.
Nothing is free, especially not quality information updated daily.
I stopped taking the horse and carriage to work 100 years ago. I stopped living in caves and learned to use these intertubes things. My house has electricity and plumbing.
One day I hear newspapers might be a thing of the past, but who knows they are so useful in this internet/electronic age.
Plus I especially hope the NYT dies a long agonizing flaming death from forcing me to register just to view their online articles (I’ve successfully managed to avoid that though).
In all seriousness if a business model doesn’t work anymore, well it doesn’t work anymore. Newspapers had plenty of opportunity to jump on the electronic bandwagon, but they missed the boat in a big way.
…and actually quality information that is updated daily is free. In fact instead of only being updated once per day the free news information on the internet is updated almost instantly. Newspapers have actually become the slowest form of news.
Correct if you only think of the newspaper as a printed product. As I tried to argue in my post, the actual printed product is merely one medium through which the information is delivered. The internet is but another medium it is delivered. But if you ask yourself how the -information- we consume is gathered, digested, and reported to us, whether via newsprint or the web, it has to be paid for somehow. It is that sense that the information is not free. You may consume it without direct cost to you, but the production and delivery of it to you is certainly not without cost to someone.
And if I may, one could easily argue that the news organizations embraced jumped on the electronic bandwagon too quickly or, perhaps more accurately, without sufficiently thought. Giving away their product for free on the web is part of the reasons for their current financial crises.