NYT to charge for web access in 2011

As of January 2011, visitors to the New York Times website (nytimes.com) will only be allowed to view a limited number of articles for free in a given month. To read more, a flat fee must be paid, but will grant unlimited access.

Those who subscribe to The Times’ print editions would receive free access to the website with no additional charge. Though The New York Times Company made the announcement last week, it has yet to decide how much readers will be charged for online subscriptions, or how many articles readers will be allowed to see before having to pay up. The company has said, however, that all visitors to the website will have full access to the home page free of charge, and also through search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing.

For the past year, The Times Company has been researching and developing pay-system software that can be easily integrated with the Times’ website and its print subscriber database.

“This is a bet, to a certain degree, on where we think the Web is going,” said Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Times Co. chairman and publisher of the newspaper, of The Times’ strategy to develop new revenue. “This is not going to be something that is going to change the financial dynamics overnight.”

This is not the newspaper’s first attempt at creating a pay model for its website. In the 1990s it charged readers located overseas, and from 2005 to 2007 a fee was charged to access editorials and columns.

For more, visit: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/business/media/21times.html?hp&emc=na