The New York Times has dropped the number of free online articles readers can access per month by half. The change seems to come as part of an initiative to get more people to pay for digital subscriptions.
Previously readers could access 20 articles per month for free online. Starting in April that number will drop to only 10 free reads per month. The press release details this change as well as a few other interesting points. On smartphone and tablet apps the Top News section will remain free. In addition, subscribers to home delivery newspapers will continue to be able to access New York Times content online for free.
From that release, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman and chief executive officer of The New York Times Company and publisher of The New York Times said,
“Last year was a transformative one for The Times as we began to charge for digital access to our content. Today, close to a half million people are now paying for digital content from The Times and the IHT. We knew that readers placed a high value on our journalism, and we anticipated they would respond positively to our digital subscription packages. Our commitment to all of our subscribers, both print and digital, is that we will continue to invest in and evolve our journalism and our products, and we will remain a source of trustworthy news, information and high-quality opinion for many years to come.”
Apparently digital subscriptions are becoming pretty popular. In the last year the New York Times has amassed 454,000 subscriptions. Considering the prevalence of tablets and smartphones it seems like the Times' decision to push their digital subscriptions makes sense. The issue here is that cutting free access to articles in half won't necessarily drive up digital subscriptions. It has the potential to have the opposite effect, driving readers away from the publication all together.
Do you subscribe to the New York Times digitally, or any other newspaper for that matter? I've never been one to subscribe to a publication like this when there are so many sites online that offer up the same information for free. Let us know if you bother to pay for the convenience of reading your news digitally in the comments.
