New York Times Goes Live Today, Newspapers Taking Notes

Posted 03/28/2011 at 6:34am | by Paul Lilly

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Print newspapers like The New York Times have struggled with this whole Internet thing, in which online users have come to expect free and immediate access to all kinds of information, including news and events. For some, online ads are where the money's at. For The New York Times, a paywall is the answer, and it's going live later today at 2 PM ET. Starting then, you'll need a subscription to enjoy unfettered access to NYT's articles.

According to a report in CNN, NYT analyzed online reader habits and conducted polls to determine that 20 is the magic number of free articles users should be given every four weeks. After that, you'll need a subscription, which starts at $15/month for unlimited online and smartphone content, $20/month for online access and the iPad app, or $35 for everything. If you're a print subscriber, you don't have to pay any additional subscription fees.

The New York Times isn't the first major publication to put up a paywall -- both The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times also charge for online content -- but it is the biggest general interest paper to do so. Up to this point, Web advertising has made up about a quarter of NYT's ad revenue, but it hasn't been enough to offset the drop in print revenue, CNN reports.

You can bet other papers are paying attention to how this works out for NYT, and if successful, expect others to follow. At the same time, it remains to be seen if readers will be receptive to paying for something that just yesterday was free.