New York Times Opens Paper Completely (Almost)

The New York Times announced that it will remove the Times Select portion of its online offering tomorrow, and make the entire new content of the paper free online. The theory behind this is that the opened content will carry advertisements which will more than offset the reduced revenue from those who have subscribed to Select.

The model should work, as the pages formerly available only to those who paid for access can now be further stuffed with ad content. If the ads are carefully targeted, the people reading both the content and the ads should make a large contribution to the total dollars accumulated - it works for Google, why not the New York Times?

The Times online will be free to anyone, but only content from 1851 to 1922 and from 1987 to 2007. For some reason, the years from 1923 to 1986 will still be premium pages, so for most of us the news is great. For researchers, needing content from the ‘costly’ years, hope springs eternal!

On another note, the Wall Street Journal is contemplating becoming free in response to the gift from the Times. Yippee!

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[tags] New York Times, premium pages, Times Select, ad supported content, Wall Street Journal [/tags]