New York Times to charge $15 for online content

The readers will be allowed to view up to 20 articles, videos and photo galleries for free in a month. After the readers have crossed this limit, they will be prompted by the newspaper website to buy a subscription plan.

New subscription plan
The prices start from $15 for four weeks of access to the website.

Ken Doctor, an analyst with Outsell Inc. and the author of 'Newsonomics,' said that charging for online content could be a good idea but the pricing of the Times can scare away the readers.

Arthur Sulzberger Jr. publisher of the paper, said, “This move is an investment in our future. It will allow us to develop new sources of revenue to support the continuation of our journalistic mission and digital innovation, while maintaining our large and growing audience to support our robust advertising business.”

The readers who have subscribed for the home delivery of the print edition of the paper will be given full access to the website and the apps for smart phones and tablet computers.

Similarly, the subscribers of the International Herald Tribune will also get unlimited access to the website but not the apps.

Readers searching for articles through Google will be allowed access to five articles per day.

However, the newspaper’s crossword apps are not included in any of these subscription plans. Neither is the access to e-reader edition on Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Amazon’s Kindle or the Sony Reader.

Efforts aimed at increasing revenue
This is not the first time the newspaper is charging for online access to increase in its revenue.

In 2005 it has launched TimesSelect which used to charge readers who didn’t subscribe to the print edition for access to its articles.

TimesSelect was discarded in 2007, amd the paper made its website available to all readers free of cost.

The New York Times attracts more than 30 million unique visitors to its website in a month.

It will become the largest non-business newspaper which will be charging for its content. Other business papers like The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times have been charging their readers for long.

Pay walls can increase revenue for newspapers
Pay walls are becoming associated with the future of the newspapers as the Newspaper Association of America said that the revenue from advertisements has plunged by 6.3 percent which is a 25 years low.

The shares of the paper reached $8.89, an increase of 3 cents in the regular trading after the news.

Analysts have a mixed opinion about the subscription plan of the Times.

Ken Doctor, an analyst with Outsell Inc. and the author of 'Newsonomics,' said that charging for online content could be a good idea but the pricing of the Times can scare away the readers.

“My guess is they will have to test some lower pricing to get a large number of costomers,” opined Doctor.