Eric Friedman – Marketing.fm

Anybody who wouldn't pay for NY Times is not interested in the very best newspaper and web site of the journalistic record. There is no source of so much, science art politics photos travel books and on and on in the world. Most of the contributors to NY Times are very talented and extraordinarily committed to understanding better what they write about. I can't think of one other journalistic artifact which even rises to the shin level with the NYT.

Goodbye links to the NYT.

I am hoping that will not happen

While people still stay "I can get that information for free elsewhere," I doubt they can charge.

Whether that sentiment is TRUE or not is irrelevant. Clearly you can't get NYT op-ed pieces elsewhere, clearly there's a base level of journalism that CNN doesn't have, clearly the in-depth pieces aren't matched by any blog-level source on the Internet.

But if most people don't value it, it doesn't matter.

Personally I pay $50/year for the New Yorker magazine because it's amazing and you can't get that content anywhere else. But I could argue with other people all day whether it's "worth it" -- doesn't matter right?

In the end we know they can't make enough money on-line to cover costs. After all, without classified they can't make enough money even in print to cover costs!

There's probably completely different models that could work, but just transferring the old model into the new medium isn't enough.

Exploring these new models is finally what they are about to embark on,
something that with yield results with data vs. guessing.

Yes they are exploring, and I wish them the best of luck because it would be a shame to lose the real journalism and commentary.

I worry that they'll run out of money before they succeed, and that they might be too stuck in the past to succeed.

I'm rooting for them anyway.

Its tough to turn an aircraft carrier, but once its done...

Bringing in the right net native people is one way to help, but you have to
relinquish control and feedback, something that they have not been able to
do well to date. Some initiatives like the Times People bar and other
things have come a long way - but others are still seemingly behind the
times.

if there is value to their content then i can see people paying for it.. being based in the uk I dont see any value in buying it..

I wonder if localized subscriptions will lead to a business model

It is an interesting topic. It has great value to the local individual - the only downside to this is that in the UK these papers are mostly free (ad funded obviously). I am guessing that is because the greater distribution gained from being free leads to greater advertising revenues. I am sure there is an equation somewhere which links audience size vs advertising revenues in the news publishing world.

The problem right now is we are in this void where some are still reading local news offline and others are reading it only online. Local businesses who advertise in these local papers have been difficult to pull online so far, but local papers have the sales force to attract this advertising online quicker and so have a head start on others.

people only pay for actionable information.

brett favre might play for the vikings this year... big deal... what can i really do with that?

i can get that same information anywhere. they might have better writers but do i need to pay for that?

always seems to be the trouble with paying for info

subscription models work... it just needs to be within a framed context.

if brett favre was going to sign for the vikings during the season, a serious fantasy league would pay for that information.

Maybe, depends how difficult to find other versions of the stuff they want to charge for.

As an aside, WSJ had a survey that went through their iPhone app asking if I would pay for the news on that.

I think these guys will continue to experiment and test revenue streams. The business models will emerge from these tests and innovation.

No harm there. Truth is, while we all have our preferences for how things will shake out, none of us know for sure and the only way for a company to get things right is to throw a number of irons into the fire and see what catches on.

There are too many other places to get news online for me to pay for the NYT.

Where do you get your news?

I get a lot of my news from CNN, but for the most part, wherever is linked from google News or Yahoo news is where I wind up. I think that jeremystein has a very good point that people will pay for actionable information. That's how the Motley Fool stays afloat. People pay for information that they can make money on or has an actual monetary value to it. Today's headlines don't provide actual value when they are free everywhere else.

But can you trade on insight and explanation of current events

If I had an unlimited budget I'd wind up paying for it because money wouldn't be much of a worry and the convenience of paying to have total access would outweigh the money option, but that's not the case. I won't see any financial gain from reading a deeper analysis of the Sotomayor hearing specifically from the New York Times that I can't find elsewhere and the internet isn't the medium where I read long format articles anyway.

What would I pay to have access to? Magazines in print. I pay for those as it stands, because those aren't news. I don't want to pay for anything digital that has an intellectual expiration date.

Its interesting no ISP has tried to give access based on sharing revenue
with a publishing company.