It’s been a rough year for print media, with numerous publications either going extinct or converting to online-only format. As print subscribers and advertisers abandon newspapers, even the biggest names aren’t immune, and now, The New York Times is toying with the idea of charging for access to its articles online. The company has sent out a survey to its newspaper subscribers, asking them whether they’d be willing to pay between $2.50 and $5.00 for access to nytimes.com. Such a move wouldn’t be unprecedented for the Times – as Bloomberg notes , the company offered something called “Times Select” several years ago that charged for some content, generating $10 million per year in revenue until the program was shuttered in 2007. The Times is also currently experimenting with its Times Reader version of the paper that uses Adobe AIR, offered for free to print subscribers, but $14.95/mo to others. Although an impressive app, it’s unclear so far if many people are willing to pay for it. In any event, The New York Times wouldn’t be the first major paper to charge for access – The Wall Street Journal has provided limited

access to its content with a weekly fee for full access for years (the current rate is $1.99 per week) with some success. Recent estimates place WSJ.com revenue at $200 million per year between both subscriptions and advertising. The massive hurdle The New York Times faces in going this route is that readers are used to not paying for its website. Truth be told, however, like the WSJ, The Times still breaks a significant number of hugely important stories, meaning that for many who depend on timely news, a NYTimes.com subscription might still be a must-have. Is it enough to offset the online readers (and ad dollars) the paper would lose by charging? That’s the equation that the newspaper’s number crunchers will have to run. Meanwhile, we thought it would be fun to do a survey of our own readers. The results should be fairly predictable, but anyways … Would you pay to read The New York Times online? ( survey software ) Tags: newspapers , the new york times

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The New York Times Asks Readers If They’d Pay For Online Version