One Year Later, The New York Times Calls Pay Wall A Success
March 20, 2012
One year after introducing its pay gate, The New York Times Media Group is calling the program a success. At the same time, the company is making it more difficult for non-subscribers to read content online.
The Times has proven that there is money to be made online by charging for news content. Today, the company announced that it had approximately 454,000 paid subscribers to its various digital subscription packages, which are required to access most content on their iPhone/iPod touch and iPad apps.
Says Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., chairman and chief executive officer of The New York Times Company and publisher of The New York Times:
"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."Also announced was that beginning in April, The Times would be moving the pay gate at NYTimes.com to 10 free articles a month from 20. Beyond 10 articles and for unlimited access to the site, users will be asked to become digital subscribers. On The Times's iPhone and iPad apps, the Top News sections will remain free. To go deeper into the apps' other sections, users will be asked to become digital subscribers. Finally, readers who come to Times articles through links from e-mail, search, blogs and social media will continue to be able to access those individual articles, even if they have reached their reading limit. For some search engines, users will have a daily limit of five free links to Times articles. To mark the first anniversary, The Times will offer a special thank you gift to existing digital subscribers and home delivery subscribers who have linked their accounts for digital access. Later this month, those subscribers will be invited to give a gift of a 12-week subscription to the NYTimes.com + Smartphone Apps package to a non-subscribing friend or family member. For unlimited access, The Times is offering the following three packages:
- The NYTimes.com + the iPhone app, $15 every four weeks
- The NYTimes.com+ the iPad app, $20 every four weeks
- All Digital Access (Web, all iOS devices), $35 every four weeks