TimesSelect redux

[thedarkages]

So, in 2011, the New York Times is going to start charging for online content.

They're "trying to get it right," after their dismal failure with TimesSelect.

If the price is right, it wouldn't be a bad thing. I'd like the Times to survive.

But this is the newspaper that wanted to charge me $91.00 a year for the fryin' Book Review.

I have no confidence that they will paywall in a way that isn't extortionate.

And that will probably mean farewell to the Paper of Record.

I suppose the loss of comforting things from the past is just part of growing older. Still, it's hard to see it happen.

Comments

[ikkyu2.livejournal.com]

As you point out, this is the second time they will have tried this.

It won't work. Didn't work last time, won't work now. I suspect they'll probably undo it in a hurry, same as they undid Times Select.

The fourth estate's business model got broken by the Internet. A newspaper is pretty well a buggy whip or a typewriter - something that got superseded by better technology. The death throes aren't particularly pretty, but I think reporting's been on the downtrend for at least a decade.

[thedarkages]

I think you're right about the downtrend. On Twitter, someone linked to a graph showing the number of working reporters over time. It peaked in the late 1990s and then fell precipitously, to the point where we now have only about as many reporters as we did in the 1950s. Not completely on point, but it does show approximately the same timeframe for two parallel trends.