“Select” no more.
Every political junkie that’s strapped for cash and hasn’t visited www.nytimes .com recently must read this!!
For a long time, the New York Times’ website has had its columns, archives, and some special features avaiable only to its “Select” members who had to pay a fee to see them.
Well, there’s good news for those of you who wanted to read the likes of Thomas Friedman and Daivd Brooks - all columns are now readable online for free! I don’t know when the update happened, but I just stumbled across this surprising fact very recently.
Whether you think they’re too liberal or spot-on in their views, there’s some seriously fantastic writers for that newspaper. Because of that, everyone who is interested in politics shouldn’t hesitate for one second to check it out.
Go to www.nytimes.com now! I’m serious!
November 5th, 2007 at 12:00 am
I read about this somewhere (Slate? Salon? Can’t remember where). Basically they finally realized that few people will pay for premium news when pretty-good news is available free, and that it’s more profitable to have a lot of people visit the site (and sell ads) than few people (who pay a fee).
The problem with pay news services isn’t the fee - most people would be willing to pay a couple bucks to sate an instant quest for knowledge. What stops people is the process of going to the subscription page, pulling out a credit card, fililng out the info, worrying about another login and password, etc. As soon as there’s some extremely easy way to pay for stuff online - like a Mastercard-sponsored computer program that syncs up with web sites to make purchasing hassle-free. I’d be broke within a week.
November 13th, 2007 at 11:58 am
I’m glad they opened up too. Wish more would.
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