The Death of TimesSelect
Jeff Alworth
In my travels around the state the last few days, I didn't have a lot of time to mark major events, like the demise of the New York Times' ill-conceived TimesSelect subscription plan:
The move comes two years to the day after The Times began the subscription program, TimesSelect, which has charged $49.95 a year, or $7.95 a month, for online access to the work of its columnists and to the newspaper’s archives. TimesSelect has been free to print subscribers to The Times and to some students and educators.
In addition to opening up its biggest traffic-drivers (the columnists), the Times will also open its archives back to '87 (a monumental boon to bloggers), as well as selected content back to 1851 (!).
But of course, this has been big news in the blogosphere for two days--Technorati is tracking nearly a thousand links to the story. What interests me is the incredible strategic 180 it represents. About the time the Times went to the service, the Washington Post had gone to its expansive, interactive form that featured tons of web-exclusive content. The two models seemed like test cases for the future of print publishing. The test is apparently over.
I don't know who was advising the Times on this one, but they really misread the trends in technology. In the article I quoted above, there's a revealing passage that left my jaw hanging open:
What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.
“What wasn’t anticipated was the explosion in how much of our traffic would be generated by Google, by Yahoo and some others,” [Senior VP of Times.com Vivian] Schiller said.
Ms. Schiller was careful to use the passive there to obscure who exactly hadn't anticipated this--but it sure wasn't anyone who had even passing familiarity with the blogosphere. Or the realities of internet advertising:
“The business model for advertising revenue, versus subscriber revenue, is so much more attractive,” he said. “The hybrid model has some potential, but in the long run, the advertising side will dominate.”
The Times seem to be learning, though--this week Paul Krugman announced he'd be hosting a blog on the site. Better late than never.
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2:03 p.m.
Sep 20, '07
This is wonderful news. I get home delivery of the NYT (a habit I've had for many years) so I was never affected by the decision to charge for parts of the site, but during the TimesSelect era it was always a huge PITA to email articles to my friends who were not subscribers. The NYT is a great paper and its opinion columns and archives need to be open to the world. I applaud this.
Sep 20, '07
Moron O'Dowd David Brooks Judith Miller
I wouldn't read the NYT if it was printed on Paris Hilton's ass cheeks.
Althought I must say - Krugman rocks!
Sep 20, '07
Great News!!!
They don't deliver the Times out here, and I wasn't going to cough up $49.95 for what had been a free website. I'm glad to see they've come to their senses.
“The business model for advertising revenue, versus subscriber revenue, is so much more attractive,” he said. “The hybrid model has some potential, but in the long run, the advertising side will dominate.”
Duh! I'd say that's not exclusive to the internet. That's old school. Have you ever picked up a Sunday Oregonian?
4:34 p.m.
Sep 20, '07
Three cheers to The New York Times!!
Anybody want to start a betting pool on how long it will take The Oregonian to (1) develop a good search engine AND (2) not charge for items you are able to find that are more than 14 days old, AND (3) have all of their stories and story-related graphics available on-line?
If it matters to Oregonians you will have a hard time finding it at their www.oregonlive.com website.
4:41 p.m.
Sep 20, '07
No doubt, having read your scathing comment, Chuck (as I know the O writers do), they are on it even as I write.
No doubt.
Sep 20, '07
Over here in unincorporated Portland, otherwise known as the western fringe of the Multnomah/Washington County line, I see more than a few New York Times delivery boxes in front of homes. Found that odd at first, until I learned a little more about the local progressive crowd. This bunch is largely comprised of pretentious morons and receiving a newspaper from 3,000 miles away represents some kind of status symbol to them. They're also some of the biggest hypocrites I have ever met. Large suburban homes on large lots with rather inefficient, expensive vehicles parked in the driveway. I chuckle to myself as I walk by on my evening stroll with mans best friend. I'm the crazy "conservative" (though probably more of a Libertarian in reality) down the street with the energy efficient home and sensible vehicles parked in the garage. There is no newspaper box out front, as printed "news" is long since obsolete. Do any of you progressive global warming alarmists ever stop to consider the ecological impact of subscribing to yesterdays news? Of course not. That would be the hypocrisy angle. Sooner or later, probably when the old people die off, newspaper subscriptions will be a thing of the past. Why is it that those who label themselves as "progressive" appear to be anything but?
5:20 p.m.
Sep 20, '07
Great to hear. I basically stopped even surfing the New york Times website once they put most of their stuff behind the firewall. Back int he day (mid to late 90s) I was a major Times forum junkie. It was the biggest boneheaded move by a media giant who hasn't a clue as to what the online medium potential really is all about and the halo effect moving to as much open content as possible has. Same with most major media corporations like NBCs recent boneheaded move to pull its content from iTunes into it's own proprietary service (granted iTunes isn't fully free on the content side, only free app and previews). Seems NBC is going to learn the hard way like the Times has.
Now if only most news/informational websites would do a better job of including rich, contextually relevant and substantive links within their content, to give fuller non-linear context to stories and information, they might be onto something.
5:23 p.m.
Sep 20, '07
Joe12Pack, nice schtick (i.e. worthless blather) you got going on there.
Sep 20, '07
I'm flattered lestadelc, but having read several of your posts, I know that I'm a distant second fiddle to you.
5:49 p.m.
Sep 20, '07
hey Joe12Pack,
My ride is the MAX. I used to live in Connecticut and New York and I got hooked on the NYT at the tender age of 17 (and then came, oh my God, Watergate! I read three or four papers a day in the summer of 1974).
I subscribe to a printed newspaper (actually, two of them) so I can read the news on the way to work in the morning, and I recycle it when I am done. I don't live in a "large suburban home" on a large lot. I live in a city house on a .15 acre lot in Northeast Portland, three blocks from the light rail. I'm sorry if you are offended by my car-free, newspaper-loving lifestyle, but it works for me.
(smooooch)
5:57 p.m.
Sep 20, '07
Hope the reading didn't put to much of a strain on your lips, or cause too many paper cuts looking up words it the dictionary.
5:58 p.m.
Sep 20, '07
should read:
Mea culpa.
Sep 20, '07
There actually appear to be two changes taking place at the NYTimes. One is this intelligent decision to stop charging for the content most likely to generate ad revenue. The other is to transfer much of its web content from the news pages to blogs. This also is an improvement.
In the past, most of the "breaking news," that is, news on which no NYTimes reporter has had the time or the patience to report, came in the form of the uninspired reporting of the Associated Press, which reports only events reflecting what it believes is the majority opinion. Most other online news sites seem to follow this model. When insignificant things happen, like Bush says something, or OJ Simpson posts bail, other sites treat it as breaking news. It's front and center on their front page. And of course the biggest problem is that nobody actually wants to read those stories, thereby generating very little ad revenue.
NYTimes, on the other hand, has begun to post these events on blogs as sort of lit reviews. "Here's what's being said about these various events, now let us know how little you care," which people then do. What this trend does is free up space on their front page and in people's attention spans for the news that really is significant and well reported on -- all the news, if you will, that's fit to print.
The blogs become a compilation of the news that may still be significant in sum, but not as much individually. They also allow for some great editorializing. In a sense, this part of the Times' web content is becoming more like the Daily Show. Entertaining, but not mind-numbing.
So all the stupid, insignificant news now rivals the great reporting they already do, without depleting or replacing it (so far; they should be careful of that).
Compare that to oregonlive.com, which ... forget I even mentioned it. Oy.
Sep 20, '07
Besides, Maureen Dowd is hot. Yow.
10:57 p.m.
Sep 20, '07
there are 2 excellent reasons to cheer this move by the NYT: Frank Rich & Paul Krugman. it was frustrating not to read them during the TS era. i just started Rich's 2006 book "The Greatest Story Ever Sold" and it's great reading. horrible content, terrific writing. now i can read these columnists on a regular basis again (and the occassional feature that looks interesting and was hidden from site, not to mention being able to search 20 years of archives).
11:10 p.m.
Sep 20, '07
Chuck, I fully agree that The Oregonian's web presence is among the worst out there, but there's a clearer starting point for addressing that situation.
Reasonable people may disagree over whether a paper should charge for its content online, but there is simply no excuse -- beyond "not getting it" or simple stubbornness -- for the "You can't get thar' from here" issue.
Countless web sites, blogs, Wikipedia entries, email messages, etc. reference stories that have since "expired." In many of those cases, the link is the only bit of information the reader has about the article, beyond the fact that it concerns a subject of interest to them.
When the reader clicks the link, though, does she get a page that gives the headline, the date, the reporter's name? Or a button to buy the article? No -- all that comes up is a strange blank page, or in some cases, a link to the Oregonian's (sub-standard) search engine.
This issue goes beyond mere annoyance -- as I believe Kari has pointed out in the past, it can have a significant impact on issues as wide-ranging as public safety (can't find the article about the criminal down the block) and economic development (can't find the name of that hip new restaurant.)
It also hinders us, as a community, from developing a coherent narrative about our history and the world we inhabit.
For some odd reason, I've written at length about this -- it's all summed up here.
11:11 p.m.
Sep 20, '07
And close italics. If somebody with the magical powers can put that tag after "The Oregonian" above I'd be much obliged…
Sep 21, '07
The NYT drops web fees.
Do we score "1" for free enterprise?
Sep 21, '07
I give the Times more of a break than other posters. The Times made the decision twenty years ago to become the nation's newspaper (Joe, that's why folks read it, it has little to do with pretension or ideology. How many WSJ subscribers do you see? Think they're all pretentious conservatives?)
Their big decision at that time was to create a national printing and distribution network.
The Post chose a different path, it focused on the web and on its localism.
If you look at the subscriber base and revenues, you'll see the Times made the right choice.
<h2>The Times made an error with Times Select (another correction from above--never has "most of their content" been behind the firewall--only the columnists and the archives older than 2 weeks) and has learned.</h2>