The (New York) Times Are Changing: NYTimes.com Ends TimesSelect Subscription Program
If you enjoy reading The New York Times’ columnists online like I do, but don’t like the idea of paying for it (same!), you’re in luck: it was announced today that The New York Times will end its TimesSelect program, opening up a number of areas of the site, including some of its vast archives, to the public for free.
The Times claims that it generates $10 million a year from the program off 227,000 subscribers (people who buy print subscriptions were automatically included in the program as well), but that the lure of online advertising revenue based on page views is the rationale for ending the program.
TimesSelect was an interesting experiment to see if people would pay for highly valued content. However, free content supported by online advertising is the overwhelmingly dominant model, so it makes sense for The New York Times to follow suit.
Will The Wall Street Journal be next?
