New York Times: No Further Charges for Web Access

Flap reported on the New York Times charging subscribers for complete access to their on-line content yesterday. The post is here.

Now the NYT has clarified their subscription plans. Besides the TimeSelect subscription they have decided to charge no more. Read the piece here:

The New York Times Co.’s decision to charge for online access to Op-Ed and news columnists should not be seen as a first step toward placing even more articles behind a subscription wall, a Times executive said Tuesday.

Martin Nisenholtz, senior vice president for the Times’ digital operations, said the newspaper settled on charging for columnists after a “very robust discussion inside the company.”

“There were people arguing to put the entire thing in,” Nisenholtz said. “There were people arguing to put none of it in. … I think we’ve made the decision we’ve made for the foreseeable future.”

His remarks at the Syndicate conference on aggregation and syndication technologies came a day after the Times announced plans to charge $49.95 a year for non-print subscribers to read the columns. Access comes free for home delivery subscribers.

Available beginning Sept. 19, the TimesSelect subscription will also come with an early look at some articles, including those in the Real Estate and the Magazine sections, and access to the Times’ online archives, eventually going back to 1851. Non-subscribers to TimesSelect would pay up to $2.95 for each article older than a week.

Most of the news, features and multimedia items will remain free.

This is still a poor business decision and will only embolden competing news sources to remain free on the internet.