quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

but w/e limting access idk - what abt incoming links - what will the bloggers think

prob won't be too hard to get around this but I think I'll probably just end up reading fewer 'marginal' nyt articles

the real effect will be in the link economy imo

i think that links from blogs will go through

i mean the aim here is to wring as much as possible from the people who read NYT every day, have it as their home page or w/e... ppl who only visit thru bloglinks arent going to subscribe anyway

yeah im not sure of the details on that - silver there says 5 a day from google - so theres a limit there - unlimited from twitter

I feel like this might actually be financially successful but the long-term effect will also be a pretty significant decline in the times' influence

eh i cant imagine this is gonna work out much better than their last paywall attempt

eh, i doubt it. the times was influential when you had to buy a paper. 90% of newspaper websites are gonna be subscriber-based within the next few years. xp

i really dont want to pay for the times

ah ok via faq incoming links are always good but do count against yr monthly total

12. Can I still access NYTimes.com articles through Facebook, Twitter, Google or my blog? Back to top
Yes. We encourage links from Facebook, Twitter, search engines, blogs and social media. When you visit NYTimes.com through a link from one of these channels, that article (or video, slide show, etc.) will count toward your monthly limit of 20 free articles, but you will still be able to view it even if you've already read your 20 free articles.

When you visit NYTimes.com by clicking links in Google search results, you'll enjoy up to five free articles per day.

http://www.nytimes.com/content/help/account/purchases/subscriptions-and-purchases.html

yeah even though it's the only american newspaper site I visit regularly I don't think I'm gonna feel like I'm missing out on much, I get my 'news'-news elsewhere.

also surely they could save money by significantly downscaling and just trying to be the last man standing when it came to solid old school journalism? but I guess they know they get more hits online w/ stupid opinion pieces and trend pieces.

eh, i doubt it. the times was influential when you had to buy a paper. 90% of newspaper websites are gonna be subscriber-based within the next few years. xp

― max, Thursday, March 17, 2011 1:05 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i feel like this wont be a realistic business model until more newspapers die off - theres still way too much redundancy - people will just go elsewhere - and it may never be a a money making approach - arriana huffpost is surely enjoying this announcement v much

*buys subscription, registers curatedtimes.com*

joe when is the paywall for the bløg going up

the paper is also more or less in hock to carlos slim, they need to make money, and fast

so i dont think downsizing is really an option

i think theyre setting the price kind of high and making it needlessly complicated, but they need a paywall

This would be all fine and dandy if their systems could link my paper delivery and online accounts.

joe when is the paywall for the bløg going up

― J0rdan S., Thursday, March 17, 2011 1:13 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

in bløg you pay w/soul

Basically they're explaining that they're going to be screwing with your ability to navigate within their website. If you can get to it from Google, and you can get to it in an unlimited fashion from links people share, then they're just doing checking on the referring site and variables in the URL.

In other words, you could code up a script or browser plugin to make all the articles free really, really easily.

I imagine they'd be fine with that since people taking advantage of such a plugin would be a v small percentage of their hits

yeah theyre going after the low hanging fruit for sure, but theres no way theyre not losing traffic bigtime just via people not wanting/knowing how to deal

not even sure I'd care enough to dl future plugin

To elaborate on what I meant, is that they're killing the amount of time a user spends on their site. If you're able to still jump in and read an article or two after seeing a Google News summary, it's cool. But you traditionally want readers to stay on your site, browsing articles, and viewing multiple pages (presumably with ads). They're making the default model one where you'd read one piece of content and jump back out, because browsing is disabled.

To me, that's the difference between being a newspaper/magazine and being something like a wire service that delivers individual articles.

IMO the best part of going to a site like NYTimes or a magazine site is the serendipity of reading an article you came to read, and then reading something completely unrelated that you weren't even aware of because it's in the same package.

that immersive experience is what the ipad/iphone version will be all about imo - the web site (for non-subscribers) will be more like what you describe and seems like it will essentially be an advertisement for the app or for a subscription

huh, at those prices you might as well subscribe to the weekender or whatever its called--wonder if theyre trying to goose their print subscriber rate

― max, Thursday, March 17, 2011 12:53 PM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

kind of sort of http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2011/03/17/nytimes-subscriptions-arrive-whats-with-the-420-top-end

The prices are incredibly high. The most I would pay is $49 a year. That is what I pay for usatoday.com.

Best comment on that story. People pay for USA Today?

i've been a daily subscriber of the times for about five years
if you want yesterday's paper, hit me up on twitter

lotta quiddities and agonies itt

the nyt syndicates a lot of their content don't they - so you'd be able to get the content by going through the Louisville Gazette or w/e (via google news search)

but not necessarily the content relating to rich yuppie/hipster twits and their inane "trends," tho'.

i feel like this wont be a realistic business model until more newspapers die off - theres still way too much redundancy - people will just go elsewhere - and it may never be a a money making approach - arriana huffpost is surely enjoying this announcement v much

― ice cr?m, Thursday, March 17, 2011 1:10 PM Bookmark

*buys AOL stock*

I buy the paper on Sun, Wed & Fri, I've done my part

interesting point from felix salmon I can link to an NYT article knowing that my readers will always be able to follow the link, but Paul Krugman can’t. Which isn’t going to make him very happy.

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/05/25/nyt-side-door-opens-up-again/

last time they tried this it worked well http://backend.userland.com/2003/06/16#a265

Did anyone already post this?

The Times scheme allows readers 20 free stories per month before they have to pay. However, if you come in via Twitter or Facebook, reading the story doesn't count against your total.

So, cheapskates, meet @freenyt, a three-hour old Twitter feed that intends to tweet all the Times stories.

A non-paywall related comment -- I've been feeling frustration with the NYTimes's reporting for a long time now and I recently put my finger on what it is while reading a Sunday story about the egyptian vote -- everything is so narrative-based, and the tendency is toward fitting everything into narrative tropes. So there's this article on an important Egyptian vote, and yet in the whole four or five paragraphs that appear on the front page, there's nothing substantial about what the vote actually concerns. Instead it's just a lot of cliches about democracy coming to people who didn't have it before and photos of old, weathered looking brown people voting, presumably the most-weathered and most exotic looking people the photographer could find. Into the second page, we start to get some idea that it has to do with things like term limits and a number of other parliamentary democracy-related measures, some of which are scattered throughout the messy article, and others of which are never mentioned.

Yeah, I've sensed that feature-writing vibe, too, with lots of color when sometimes all you really want is the news.
xpost Pretty sure the Times said going through links - which I assume includes twitter and facebook and blogs and stuff - does count toward your 20 free.

12. Can I still access NYTimes.com articles through Facebook, Twitter, Google or my blog? Back to top
Yes. We encourage links from Facebook, Twitter, search engines, blogs and social media. When you visit NYTimes.com through a link from one of these channels, that article (or video, slide show, etc.) will count toward your monthly limit of 20 free articles, but you will still be able to view it even if you've already read your 20 free articles.

makes sense when you think about it.

didya catch this Mag feature of Gore Vidal talking about the pulp mysteries he wrote?

After “The City and the Pillar,” which was a cheery tale of two boys who were in love with each other, Orville Prescott of The New York Times, a very distinguished newspaper of yesteryear, said that he would never review a book by me, much less read one. And he said that to Nicholas Wreden, who was the head of E.P. Dutton, who was my publisher. I said, “Can’t we get him up on charges?” And he said, “No, The Times is always like this,” and I said, “Well, the sooner they are out of business the better.” I hope I step on no toes there, but it is a kind of lousy paper and deserves everything that is coming its way.

And that is an opinion that you hold to this day?

I see no reason to change it.

gore vidal is 85

one of his many virtues!

did anyone else get anything like this?

http://www.businessinsider.com/nyt-lincoln-paywall-free-2011-3

i got it

Yes. We encourage links from Facebook, Twitter, search engines, blogs and social media.

Meanwhile they're trying to get @freenyt shut down...

xp i don't know if it's connected to the fact that i used to have free nyt select access through my academic email address or something?