New York Times online — nearly all free
Posted by Jacque on September 18th, 2007
The New York Times will stop charging for access to parts of its Web site, effective at midnight tonight.
The entire site will be open to all readers and The Times will make available its archives from 1987 to the present without charge, as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the public domain. There will be charges for some material from the period 1923 to 1986, and some will be free.
The move comes two years after The Times began the subscription program, TimesSelect, which has charged $49.95 a year, or $7.95 a month, for online access to the work of its columnists and to the newspaper’s archives. TimesSelect has been free to print subscribers to The Times and to some students and educators.
The potential for more page views and increased advertising revenue was being lost because many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com. They were unable to get access behind the pay wall and therefore were not viewing ads as well as the articles to which they had been directed.
