TimesSelect Draws Mixed Reviews from Columnists
I found a site that is publishing some of the restricted columnists, not just excerpts, and have been posting them. ---BBB
TimesSelect Draws Mixed Reviews from Columnists
By Joe Strupp is a senior editor at E&P.
Published: October 19, 2005 10:20 AM ET
NEW YORK
One month after The New York Times launched TimesSelect, an online subscription service based largely on the paper's popular Op-Ed columnists, several of the writers whose work now appears behind a paid wall report dwindling audiences.
But while the columnists contacted by E&P lament the loss of readers, most show a willingness to at least try the approach in the name of helping the paper grow its online revenues.
TimesSelect
Launched Sept. 19
Cost: $49.95/year or $7.95/month
What that gets you: Access to the paper's eight Op-Ed columnists, as well as 14 other opinion-makers in news, sports, and business. The service also includes new features such as online video commentaries by the columnists and archive access of up to 100 articles per month.
Skeptical? Print subscribers are given free access. Others can sign up for a 14-day free trial period, but have to give their credit card info.
"I'm sad to lose an awful lot of readers, and a lot of readers in places like China and Pakistan who don't have credit cards or the ability to sign up," says Nicholas Kristof, a four-year Op-Ed columnist whose work appears twice weekly. "I want to be read, and this makes it much harder. But that is tempered by a concern that we come up with a business model to pay for my trips to Africa."
Thomas Friedman, another Op-Ed columnist who has a lot of foreign readership, admitted to being torn on the subject: "I want my newspaper to have a successful business platform. But the other side of me says that I have a lot of international readers in places like Egypt, where $50 could be their college tuition for a while."
Friedman stressed that reaching readers was among the most important aspects of the opinion pages, but added, "so is a good business model." He credited the paper with trying something new, noting, "we had to dive into the pool to see what was there."
Officials at the Times have thus far declined to say just how deep that pool is. But last month, Martin Nisenholtz, senior vice president, digital operations for The New York Times Co., told E&P columnist Steve Outing that the paper's goal was to sign up hundreds of thousands of subscribers in the early days, and even more as TimesSelect matures.
Times spokesperson Diane McNulty said Tuesday that it's too early to release numbers but insisted that sign-ups were ahead of schedule. McNulty did say, however, that the conversion rate on the 14-day free trial is a "very encouraging" 90%.
When asked if the sites overall traffic numbers had been affected by the move, McNulty reported that NYTimes.com recorded a record number of unique users in September and strong pageview growth as a result of news events -- such as Hurricane Katrina -- and the online operation's search engine optimization efforts.
While the Times' Op-Ed columnists have gotten the most attention in the move, TimesSelect also incorporates the work of sports and metro columnists as well.
"I have no illusions that people are paying 50 bucks for me," said Peter Applebome, a columnist for the paper's metro section. "I think [TimesSelect] will rise and fall on what people will pay for the Op-Ed columns." For Dan Barry, another metro columnist, the impact was not a concern. "It hasn't really changed my life any," he said, but added, "this is probably the wave of the future."
So far the transition to the pay model has been relatively smooth, but popular Sunday columnist Frank Rich cited the difficulty some print subscribers have had logging on without knowing their account numbers.
"Obviously, there are bugs in this that have to be worked out," Rich said. "When I find out that relatives of mine who are Times subscribers can't get into it, that means technological bugs."
He agreed that more time needs to be given to the program. "I can't tell a big difference yet," he said, when asked to assess the impact on his column. "I get the sense that a lot of people are getting it anyway because bloggers are cutting and pasting and posting it."
Op-Ed Columnist Paul Krugman, whose writing appears Mondays and Fridays, said, "for the time being, it hurts the readers of the column. There is certainly a lot less pick-up." But as a professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University, Krugman understands perhaps better than most the financial upside to TimesSelect: "It doesn't hurt the profit center."
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told E&P columnist Steve Outing
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