With this news The Times to Charge for Frequent Access to Its Web Site [1], we may need to begin including a warning - "This click will take you to a NYTimes article. If you are at or near your monthly limit of free access, think twice before clicking".
How much would you pay to access a PD story on cleveland.com?
Ah, the times they are a changin'!
Starting in January 2011, a visitor to NYTimes.com [2] will be allowed to view a certain number of articles free each month; to read more, the reader must pay a flat fee for unlimited access. Subscribers to the print newspaper, even those who subscribe only to the Sunday paper, will receive full access to the site without any additional charge.
Executives of The New York Times Company [3] said they wanted to create a system that would have little effect on the millions of occasional visitors to the site, while trying to cash in on the loyalty of more devoted readers. But fundamental features of the plan have not yet been decided, including how much the paper will charge for online subscriptions or how many articles a reader will be allowed to see without paying.
Image courtesy Cleveland Memory [4] - A boy delivers an issue of the Cleveland Press newspaper to a house in 1957.
Links:
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/business/media/21times.html?em
[2] http://nytimes.com/
[3] http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/new_york_times_company/index.html?inline=nyt-org
[4] http://images.ulib.csuohio.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/press&CISOPTR=3317&CISOBOX=1&REC=3