While the Times does not disclose its digital revenue, online advertising across the company – which also owns the Boston Globe as well as a number of smaller daily newspapers and more than 50 websites – now makes up roughly 26 per cent of its overall advertising revenues. But digital growth still does not make up for print losses: in the first nine months of 2010, print advertising fell 8.2 per cent.
The Times will still have to strike that balance between pulling in revenue from readers and hurting its ad sales. In a research note released in January looking forward to the pay wall, UBS analyst John Janedis, who has a Sell rating on the company’s stock because of a weak print environment, estimated roughly 20 per cent of the paper’s digital advertising revenue could be at risk. Pricing is also an issue, he wrote.
“We think there is a fine balance between pricing too high & limiting new [subscriptions] vs. too low and cannibalizing the print version, though potentially significantly increasing subscriptions.”
Some other news outlets have pay walls – most prominently The Wall Street Journal, which usually charges $2.99 per week. for access to its website. The site is currently promoting a special discount for Canadian subscribers of $1.99 per week – still higher than the Times’ promotional price of 99 cents for the first four weeks, and then the regular price.
But many other websites offer much of their content for free. The iconic New York-based paper has been a bellwether for the industry in the past; the question now is whether other news outlets will follow its lead and launch their own digital subscriptions.
“Our decision to begin charging for digital access will result in another source of revenue, strengthening our ability to continue to invest in the journalism and digital innovation on which our readers have come to depend,” The New York Times Co. chairman and publisher of the paper Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. said in a statement. “This move will enhance The Times’s position as a source of trustworthy news, information and high-quality opinion for many years to come.”
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JUMPING THE PAY WALL
Do you want to read New York Times articles online but don’t feel like paying for them? Here’s how:*
1. Browse The New York Times home page or any other section front, which you can do for free.
2. Copy the headline of a story you want to read.
3. Paste the headline into a search engine.
4. Clicking on the matching New York Times link will take you to the story, which you can read without charge.
*Also works for The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times, but not The Times of London. The other way to avoid paying for New York Times material is to limit your reading to 20 stories a month.
Note: Google is the only search engine with limits on linking – only five articles per day allowed. After that, you’ll still see the search results but if you click through from Google you’ll be prompted to pay.
Detail of New York Times digital subscription plan:
Free: Everything, if you’re a print subscriber. Otherwise, you get 20 articles on the website per month, everything that appears (in brief) on the home page of the website or its sections, and the “Top News” section in mobile and tablet apps that are still free to download.
$15 (U.S.) for four weeks: Gives you access to the website, as well as a New York Times application for smart phones. (This plan is currently available to Canadians. All others become available March 28)
$20 for four weeks: Website access, plus the application for tablet devices such as the iPad.
$35 for four weeks: All digital and mobile platforms open – website, smart phone and tablet apps.
Staff
