**** the New York Times

I've a lot of mixed feelings. NYT, compromised in many ways over time, has still been my first go to it paper for all these years. The LAT site page has gotten worse and worse over the last bunch of years, but it has still been a go-to place since it's my home area. Plus, damnitall, they have snapped up Jonathan Gold from his great column in the LA Weekly. So, with LAT, a double blow, the paywall and the capture of Mr. Gold.

What first bothered me about the paywalls was the obvious - trouble for me in river city as as one more thing to pay for and though I gather not that many readers dropped out with the NYT wall, those who have are probably not now tossing links and thus advertising around to others. Though people watching out for their wallets aren't the best as optimal ad followers, their link giving could go to those who like to shop.

Also troubling is that paywalls shore up a two class system of haves and have nots, re knowledge available, relatively well written - a discrepancy which will only get worse if more paper outlets go for paywalls.
On the other hand, I understand why they have done this, and still wish NYT long life - just figure it won't work to stop the changes coming.

Meantime, I don't like getting rid of my cookies all the time as there are a bunch of sites I'd have to re sign up for on a daily basis, a bother. I'll do that once or twice a month though, and also attempt to access the LAT and NYT via other sites. I know there is news elsewhere - I have long bookmarked a couple of dozen news sites and lots of blogs and I tend to use those.

I don't understand the outrage. If the NY Times is valuable to you (and apparently it is since this would be a non-issue otherwise) then why won't you pay for it? The idea that everything I want should be mine for free died when I was five. You can probaby go to the local library and read all the newspapers (including the Times) at taxpayer expense if you can't stand the thought of paying someone for their work.

I have no problem paying for something that I value.

I do have a problem paying twice. (Once with money, once with my attention to their ads.)

Asked and answered....because the fee demanded is many multiples of what can be considered reasonable based upon the cost of providing the service. Second reason provided by Bill...those who pay are chumps, and I dont like to be a chump.

I don't get it?

What is wrong with paying for something of value?

Price gouging for news is un-American and a hostile act towards democracy....there is a LOT wrong with the NYT stance here. This is the kind of crap that I would well expect Murdock to pull, but the NYT used to be better than this.

Depends on the ad. Cute shoes are fine. Cute shoes on sale, even better.

"Price gouging" is as American as it gets. That's what capitalism is, letting the marketplace decide the price. If you have something people want, you name your price and they can pay it or not. If you think paying is for chumps then you want something for free and that's not how most things in life work.

You have a deeply disturbing view of America, you know this right? This is where I get off....I refuse to believe that we are as bad a people as you claim that we are.

I don't believe charging what the market will allow is bad. You don't really believe that items are priced on manufacturing costs plus a fair profit do you? That jewelry is cost plus 10%? That Starbucks coffee costs so much because the beans are really expensive? That movie popcorn really is $6 per bucket? Sellers of all items are trying to maximize their profit, buyers are trying to get what they can as cheaply as possible. Why that is permissible for everyone at the mall but not the NY Times eludes me. If you don't want to pay for their product, don't but don't whine that you are entitled to it or that you can dictate the "fair price" to them. That's not how the system works.

I used to work with people who thought other people who paid for things were chumps because THEY could steal them for free. They were quite convinced they were right and we were chumps.
They were called parolees.
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A friend of mine has been grousing that the NYTimes should have never been free on the Internet because now it feels like we've been bait and switched. Right. Unless you have the understanding, from the age of five, that nothing is really free.
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Yes. Me, the hippie leftist pinko, thinks that manipulating your cookies to get the NYT or doodling with your computer settings so you can get the picture of you finishing the NYC Marathon without paying Bright Room is theft because it is.
So is downloading my kid's rockband's music without sending a ******* dollar to them, so you can play the tunes on your $300.00 iPhone. GAh~!

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Uh oh.... am I on a rant?

It's a nice high rant.
Joe(I can see my house from here.)Nation

Except for NYT's SCience Tuesday, I like the Wash Post a lot.


Oh yeh, maybe Arts wednesday.
When Im in the field, I gotta have a newspaper tactile experience. I tried the e-version on a Nook and on a laptop. Its just not the same. Its like reaing some bill on a wall.

I like where my periph vision sees an article over there that I tell myself
"Im gonna read that next"
Oh yeh and the watch ads (Althogh all watches are kinda gay looking nowadays)

Bt thats another topic isnt it?


I read Lancaster Farming for all my agricultural news and long term weather reports .

Price Gouging? Meh.

It takes a lot of money to produce the news. You actually have to pay writers, photographers, editors and all of the other people who work to produce this product.

I suspect the NY Times isn't even making an exorbitant profit here given that many newspapers without paywalls are going out of business.

I wonder if Hawkeye whines about having to pay the price for donuts.

Yes sir changing your url and reading the paper at only the cost of looking at the ADVS will get you to be a parolees....LOL.

Frankly I don't read the paper enough to bother getting around their pay wall and by so doing allowing them to increase the price they sell their advs for by increasing the total numbers of readers.

However if I did they would gain and not lost a dime by my so doing as there is no way in hell that I would paid a few hundreds dollars a year to read their paper in the first place online or offline.

Digest information is not the same as materials in the non-digest world as reading the paper online does not removed anything of worth from them and once more they gain by being able to increase the prices of their advs.

They seems to know that fact as that seems the only reason to have such a weak pay wall in the first place.

The digest world demand new business models to earn a profit and so far the newspapers had not found those business models as they are too busy trying to find ways for getting the old business model into working in the new digest world.

Google and FB and Amazon and others had found such models and are earning untold billions as a result.

A pay wall model is a perfectly reasonable model that I think also works (I don't have numbers). There are a couple of companies on the web that I am happy to pay for content-- including Amazon (why did you include Amazon in your list).

Google obviously has a great business model. I hate FaceBook and I am far more comfortable paying other companies than I am using FaceBook for free.

They are being dishonest in their so call pay wall as they seems to wish to have it both way so weak that anyone can get around it limits if they wish to so those unwilling to pay the $$$$ can still add to their revenues by being counted in their total readership counts.

To me anyone who paid them those hundreds of dollars a year are indeed fools when they are in fact offering free access to those not willing to paid.

If they wish to go that route had a real pay wall.