NEW YORK, Jan. 20 (Xinhua) — The New York Times announced Wednesday that it intended to charge frequent readers for access to its website starting next year.
\”Starting in early 2011, visitors to NYTimes.com will get a certain number of articles free every month before being asked to pay a flat fee for unlimited access,\” says a report on NYTimes.com.
However, subscribers to the newspaper\’s print edition will receive full access to the site without extra charge, it says.
The New York Times is the largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States. It has won 101 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization. Its website was the most popular American online newspaper website as of December 2008, receiving more than 18 million unique visitors in that month.
However, executives of The New York Times Company said they could not yet answer fundamental questions about the plan, like how much it would cost or what the limit would be on free reading.
\”This announcement allows us to begin the thought process that\’s going to answer so many of the questions that we all care about,\” said Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the company chairman and publisher of the newspaper.
However, the publishers fear that income from digital subscriptions would not compensate for the resulting loss of audience and advertising revenue.
This would not be the first time the company had tried an online pay model, says the report.
In the 1990s it charged overseas readers, and from 2005 to 2007 the newspaper\’s TimesSelect service charged for access to editorials and columns. TimesSelect attracted about 210,000 subscribers who paid 49.95 dollars a year, but it was scrapped to take advantage of the boom in online advertising.
Company executives said the current decision was not a reaction to the ad recession but a long-term strategy to develop new revenue.
Two specialized papers already charge readers: The Wall Street Journal, which makes certain articles accessible only to subscribers, and The Financial Times, which allows nonpaying readers to see up to 10 articles a month, a system close to what is planned by The Times.
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