The New York Times has announced their plans for their paywall and digital subscriptions via a letter published today. Here it is, verbatim:
Today marks a significant transition for The New York Times as we introduce digital subscriptions. It’s an important step that we hope you will see as an investment in The Times, one that will strengthen our ability to provide high-quality journalism to readers around the world and on any platform. The change will primarily affect those who are heavy consumers of the content on our Web site and on mobile applications.
This change comes in two stages. Today, we are rolling out digital subscriptions to our readers in Canada, which will enable us to fine-tune the customer experience before our global launch. On March 28, we will begin offering digital subscriptions in the United States and the rest of the world.
MacDailyNews Take: For treating our beloved Canucks as guinea pigs, you will not be easily forgiven, NYT!
The Times continues:
If you are a home delivery subscriber of The New York Times, you will continue to have full and free access to our news, information, opinion and the rest of our rich offerings on your computer, smartphone and tablet. International Herald Tribune subscribers will also receive free access to NYTimes.com.
If you are not a home delivery subscriber, you will have free access up to a defined reading limit. If you exceed that limit, you will be asked to become a digital subscriber.
This is how it will work, and what it means for you:
• On NYTimes.com, you can view 20 articles each month at no charge (including slide shows, videos and other features). After 20 articles, we will ask you to become a digital subscriber, with full access to our site.
• On our smartphone and tablet apps, the Top News section will remain free of charge. For access to all other sections within the apps, we will ask you to become a digital subscriber.
• The Times is offering three digital subscription packages that allow you to choose from a variety of devices (computer, smartphone, tablet). More information about these plans is available at www.nytimes.com/access.
MacDailyNews Note: Here are the prices from the Times’ site:
– Full access to NYTimes.com and smartphone app – US$15 every four weeks
– Full access to NYTimes.com and our tablet app – $20 every four weeks
– Full access to NYTimes.com and our tablet and smartphone apps – $35 every four weeks
The Times continues:
• Again, all New York Times home delivery subscribers will receive free access to NYTimes.com and to all content on our apps. If you are a home delivery subscriber, go to http://homedelivery.nytimes.com to sign up for free access.
• Readers who come to Times articles through links from search, blogs and social media like Facebook and Twitter will be able to read those articles, even if they have reached their monthly reading limit. For some search engines, users will have a daily limit of free links to Times articles.
• The home page at NYTimes.com and all section fronts will remain free to browse for all users at all times.
For more information, go to www.nytimes.com/digitalfaq.
Thank you for reading The New York Times, in all its forms.
Sincerely,
ARTHUR OCHS SULZBERGER Jr.
Publisher, The New York Times
Peter Kafka reports for AllThingsD, “And with the Times’ announcement, Steve Jobs gets his first big publisher to announce it is signing on with his new subscription plan: The Times says it will sell access to the paper’s apps through iTunes, on Jobs’ new terms.”
“That means that the Times will give up 30 percent of every subscription it sells through Apple,” Kafka reports. “And the Times will also lose access to valuable subscriber data for those sales, too. But clearly the Times has decided that it’s better to work with Steve Jobs than to ignore altogether the market he’s created.”
Kafka reports, “The Times won’t be selling subscriptions through Android or Blackberry app stores, says spokesperson Eileen Murphy; the only two places to buy access to the paper will be through its site, using its e-commerce engine, and via Apple.”
Read more in the full article, including info on how to get around the NY Times’ paywall, here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Ellis D.” for the heads up.]
Well, I don’t have to upgrade my iPhone app, do I? I’ll just have to make sure to keep the current version, buggy as it still is…
Actually, I just realized that the extra costs for iPhone and iPad are for the APP. Presumably you can access NYT on all your devices for the same price through Safari for $15/wk. I would have paid up to $150 a year max for access. Not so sure about $195…
True. You’ll only need the app if you want to do offline reading
NYT is a feces rag.
Unlike most other newspapers (and Fox), the Times is not optimized for a 7th grade reading level. You apparently have to be above average in intellect and reading skills to not feel threatened by them. It seems to me that most people critiquing it see it as a symbol of something they think is “bad” without having read it more than a few times, if at all. The internet is also becoming one big advertising campaign- we’ll pay for everything one way or another. I will hold out as long as I can before I actually subscribe to digital content- I have no choice, anyway. I can barely afford the technology I love and the internet access- as well as healthy, as opposed to, “fast” food. Back to the Times-I suppose it’s either this or go out of business. Soon we (not me) will also be paying for digital versions of the Enquirer and The Post.
This will only make them go out of business that much quicker.
NPR defunded!!!
Apple’s done this “guinea pig” with us Canucks before: think iPhone tethering at its initial inception, think multiple iOS carriers for at least 1.5 years, think CDMA phones MANY MONTHS before the Verizon launch only a number of weeks ago stateside. NYT?– I think I did the crossword once.
No comics. Not interested.
heh.
The trouble with digital subscriptions (newspaper or otherwise) is that they don’t address the concerns of a large number people (like myself) who do not subscribe but only purchase an occasional issue of any particular publication.
And I have a number of other concerns as well… one of which is a potential “back issue” issue.
I subscribe to Cinefex magazine, which has a digital edition that’s free to print subscribers, or you can subscribe to it separately… but only for a small discount. However, it’s only accessible online… no downloadable file. If your subscription expires they do continue to give access to the back issue digital editions… but only for six months.
Cinefex would work really well on an iPad as it’s printed in a custom, horizontal format that would look terrific in landscape mode, however the above issues keep me from becoming a digital only subscriber.
I already have the e-replica of the Washington Post on
PressReader for 99.50 yearly (7 days a week) and, yes,
it has comics. Very happy and no reason to also get
the NYT. NYT’s pricing structure is problematic. This
will be a painful process for all papers trying to get on
the internet and still make a reasonable profit. With
free Apps like Huffintong Post,USA Today,NewsPro,
BBC News,CNN,ABC and CBS News,Fluent News,Newsy,
News360,Pulse,etc. on your iPad, does one still find
the NYT essential?
What daugav369pils said. No reason you jerks (I say that kindly) can either pay for political news (The Washington Post), economic news (The Wall Street Journal) or both political and economic and international news (The New York Times). Have a nice life. :/
NYT is my fav news app. However, I’m not willing to pay for it any more than I am the paper version. I’m just spoiled I guess. Maybe someone will eventually figure out that people are getting sick of paying for something the advertisers have already paid for. Cable TV, Hulu Plus, Newspapers, Magazines, etc…