There’s a big misunderstanding here. Journalism is not mere “information”; it is a product, created by people at some expense. No one would say “groceries want to be free” and use that as an excuse to steal steaks. Or I guess some people might, but those people would be jerks, and also criminals. “Information wants to be free” does not mean “journalism wants to be free,” or, more to the point, “journalists want to work for free.”
I like the way the Free Software Foundation puts it:
“Free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.”
If we want to keep getting quality news, someone has to pay for it. We, as readers, don’t have a “right” to free anything. Journalists, though, do have a right to get paid for their intellectual labor. If simple traffic and advertising isn’t doing the trick, then that money has to come from somewhere else. No aphorism is going to deliver us from that basic truth.
> But you can access articles for free if they’re posted to Twitter...
I have a Firefox add-on called RefControl. Hmm... I wonder - if I spoof nytimes.com and tell it that twitter.com is the referer*** site (In other words: I came from twitter.com) - I can read articles for free?
I'm sure the answer is no. That would be far, far, far too easy.
> If we want to keep getting quality news, someone has to pay for it.
A sucker is born every minute. If the backdoor is indeed open and unlocked I say (merrily) "Okay suckers pay your $15 a month!".
Oh, I don't proclaim that information - wants to be / needs to be / must be - free. I just don't want to pay that ridiculous some. I might be willing to pay $1 or $2 a month, but not more. It is a single site after all.
---
*** HTTP referrer / referer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referer
#1 Posted by F. Murray Rumpelstiltskin, CJR on Thu 17 Mar 2011 at 07:04 PM
Oops. Fixed typo: "I just don't want to pay that ridiculous sum."
[rant] This site needs a better comment system! [/rant]
Well, I guess you get what you pay for...
#2 Posted by F. Murray Rumpelstiltskin, CJR on Thu 17 Mar 2011 at 07:06 PM
Well, I think that $15 a month is more than reasonable. I was hoping they wouldn't price it so high I couldn't afford it, having logged already, according to their little gadget, 162 news items I've read so far this month. So yeah, I'll gladly pay the New York Times fifteen bucks a month for unlimited access. And along with that access, I'll take the opportunity to advise the reporters about the flaws in their journalism. I do it for free here at CJR! Perhaps I'll also advise them on replacements for some of their thoroughly calcified OpEd columnists as well; after all, they are getting paid on my dime. Such a deal!
#3 Posted by James, CJR on Thu 17 Mar 2011 at 09:59 PM
The price seems pretty reasonable to me, considering that you get full digital access across all platforms for subscribing to the Sunday paper, which is about $30/month in most markets. And you can get the first 12 weeks for half that right now.
#4 Posted by Alfred, CJR on Fri 18 Mar 2011 at 08:52 AM
I just had no idea that so many people I encounter regularly on the internet are such extreme tightwads that they are whining and plotting crimes to avoid forking over fifteen freaking bucks a month for the New York freakin Times!
Whassup with that? These people spend 200 dollars a month on their cellphone, that much on their stupid cable bill, three-four hundred dollars on every electronic gadget the minute it's released. Fifteen dollars is not even a movie a month. Fifteen freaking bucks a month is like two cups of Starbucks coffee. You guys can afford two cups of coffee a month, right?
Not only that, whining the loudest are the journos, who spend all day on Twitter wasting good shoe-leather journo time making jokes with their fellow journos and their COMPANY will probably pay for the Times subscription. What's wrong with these people?
#5 Posted by James, CJR on Fri 18 Mar 2011 at 09:42 AM
Quibble: the NYT paywall starts at $15 per four weeks, not $15 per month. That approach results in one additional billing cycle per year over a monthly term.
#6 Posted by Jeff, CJR on Fri 18 Mar 2011 at 10:36 AM
It's true that the NYT's web-only digital subscription isn't, relative to its print sub pricing, crazy expensive: It's worth roughly two Hulu subscriptions, roughly 4 Starbucks lattes, roughly 7 iTunes-ed episodes of Friday Night Lights, etc. But for the digital-to-digital (and, more importantly, competition-to-competition) comparison, here's how the Times web-only sub stacks up with the WSJ's: The NYT's is $15 for four weeks, or $195 a year; the Journal's — for first-time subscribers — is $103 a year. And the Journal isn't known for being cheap.
There's also the consumption-habit distinction between a print subscription and a digital. Typically, it's households that receive a paper every day or week or Sunday or whatever; depending on the household, that's two or three or more people sharing the cost of a single subscription. Not so for a digital subscription, which — barring any number of IP and email address workarounds — comes at a per-user cost.
Which is all to say — especially given the fact that the previous cost of a web-only subscription to the Times was $0 — I stand by my "Whoa, expensive." :)
#7 Posted by Megan Garber, CJR on Fri 18 Mar 2011 at 01:17 PM
Oh please. $3.75 a week. You can lose that in the cracks of your sofa. You can put that in your change jar every week. That's not even tip money. It's the price of one round trip bus ride. And the New York Times is far, far superior to the Wall Street Journal in every possible way. There is no comparable news organization in America. None.
I can't believe journos are such cheapskates that they would grouse about paying chump change to read the New York Freakin times and conspire to defraud them to save themselves $3.75 per week.
Gimme a break.
#8 Posted by James, CJR on Fri 18 Mar 2011 at 04:01 PM
Oooooh James:
$15.00 here, $15.00 there, "that s**t adds up", as Richard Pryor joked.
We have to watch our outgo of fifteen dollarses, now, James, as we are poorer than before.
#9 Posted by mothra, CJR on Mon 21 Mar 2011 at 12:36 PM
No, if you can't afford it don't buy it. Or spend your $15.00 on whatever you want.
What annoys me is when these journos engage in mass blog thuggery against Huffington, self-righteously demanding that she pay minor "contributors" -- but of course, not CNN's face-time hogs who also are unpaid "contributors" -- and then grouse about paying $00.54 per day to read the New York freakin Times, the finest news organization in the country, publicly plotting to defraud them of their due by engineering retweet linking schemes.
Already the NYT is privileging the demographically favored tweeter -- predominantly well-paid gadgeteers and quipsters who think nothing of dropping ten times the cost of a year subscription to the internet NYT on some new electronic gadget or app --and yet they grouse that fifty-four cents per day is "expensive."
They are like a flock of starlings flitting here and there within their tiny, self-contained, well-privileged echo chamber without original thought or original idea. Bah.
#10 Posted by James, CJR on Mon 21 Mar 2011 at 01:10 PM
"Journalists, though, do have a right to get paid for their intellectual labor."
Just a small quibble, but journalists have a legal right to demand payment for (or to ask for payment for or to put a porous paywall in front of) their intellectual labor. If it turns out that nobody or insufficient bodies are willing to pay for it they also have a legal right to seek more remunerative work.
#11 Posted by mpn, CJR on Thu 31 Mar 2011 at 03:16 PM