New York Times Digital Goes Retro

I’ve been reading The New York Times online for the past 15 years, but after the publication’s announcement yesterday that it will begin charging a subscription fee beginning March 28, I have no intent to pay up. Here’s why:

1. I don’t understand the seemingly arbitrary logic of the pay structure. The site says one place that there are three options: “computer, smartphone, tablet.” But elsewhere they describe the three tiers as “NYTimes.com + Smartphone” ($15/month); “NYTimes.com + Tablet App” ($20/month); and “All Digital Access” ($35/month). There’s no option for just a computer (NYTimes – Smartphone and Tablet App)? The assumption is that everyone has a smartphone and/or tablet as well as a computer. So what would be the base price if one wanted just access on their computer? ––$5? $10? There is none. You pay for smartphone and/or tablet access whether you want to or not.

2. It’s expensive. I figure I access an average of about 100 articles, columns, etc. each month on NYTimes.com. At the lowest rate ($15/month) that comes out to 15¢/content, which at first might seem not all that bad. But of the 100 or so articles I access each month, probably one-fourth of those (at least) are done so casually, so if I factor in actual interest, I’d probably access about 75 articles a month, or 20¢/content. But the Times will offer 20 articles a month for free to anyone registered. So that means my average use would be more like 55-60 articles a month, or let’s say 25¢/content. I don’t know that a particular film review or Paul Krugman column or pecan encrusted salmon recipe is worth that. They would have to get much more precise at writing their headlines and sub-heads to indicate content; at 25¢/view, I wouldn’t want to click on a link only to find it something other than what I thought it might be.

3. If you access a NYTimes.com article from a link on Facebook, Twitter, blog, or other social network or search engine, it will count to your free 20 articles a month until you’ve reached 20, but after that “you will still be able to view it even if you've already read your 20 free articles.” That route will be somewhat clunky to navigate, to be sure, but you can bet your $15 (or $20 or $35)/month that there will be websites that appear in the next couple of weeks that can link you to whatever content you might want to access on NYTimes.com.

Which brings us to the most important reason not to subscribe to NYTimes.com:

4. It is wholly antithetical to the history and promise of the internet. The idea, as I understood and hoped (perhaps falsely) over the past 20 or so years, is that the internet would be a digital means of connecting anyone who has access (eventually everyone) with whatever information they might want or need. Accessibility for all, very democratic. Not that there can’t be profit somewhere in the model. But the model has to be different than the model of print media, which is what the The New York Times has laid out. I don’t know what that new model might be – that’s not my job (and if it was, and I knew it, I would be as rich as Bill Gates or Steve Jobs). But I do know that limiting access to online publications through the print model (subscription) limits my access, just as I’m currently limited in accessing the print version of The New York Times (or Washington Post or Chicago Tribune or Boston Globe).

Perhaps the internet will be the death of print media after all, or at least their relegation to the status of antiques or ballet or opera. But I suspect that over the next few years and decades, as new technologies and appliances appear, the antiquated subscription model of publication will be replaced by something no one right now has even thought of. Certainly not The New York Times.