Please tell the
NY Times what your think of
paying $50 a year to read their op-ed opinions.
Emphasize why this is a bad idea that will only hurt the Times. If you like the Times online edition and read it regularly, say so.
tselect@nytimes.com is their email address for questions pertaining to their new subscription-fee online service, which goes into effect tomorrow.
The email I wrote to them is below the fold.
Dear Times Editors:
I can't believe you're going to put your op-ed columnists behind a subscription-only firewall. Do you honestly believe people will pay $50 to read your opinions? Nobody pays me $50 for my opinions, and I won't pay that for anyone else's.
I will miss reading Krugman and Rich on the web. I no longer kill trees when I read newspapers, but rely entirely on the web for my daily news fix, so their articles will no longer be accessible to me -- at least until this policy fails abjectly, and the Times returns to its senses.
As an internet reader, I view all your advertising, as I would if I read a print copy of the Times. But your cost to deliver that advertising to me is miniscule compared to the cost of printing and distributing dead trees. We both know print subscription prices barely cover the cost of paper, let alone distribution. So why pretend that internet users are getting something for "free" that print subscribers have not always gotten?
All Times readers pay with their attention, a most valuable commodity for which all news sources compete vigorously. Advertisers bear the actual costs in every news medium. To charge internet readers to view that advertising is a scam. It won't work, and the Times readership will decline -- especially and crucially, among the cognoscenti who have moved beyond print media, and now orient themselves using internet sources for their daily news. That can only hurt the Times increasingly, as more and more of the educated public makes that shift.
It will also weaken the content and influence of the Times' op-ed pieces, by disrupting the back-and-forth between print columnists and online bloggers which has lately emerged as the very lifeblood of commentary.
I have long applauded the Times for its excellent online edition, and its enlightened policy of subscription-free access. It's one reason I never read the Wall Street Journal! Subscription-free is the only way to go in this day and age, if you want to be taken seriously. Please return to your senses soon.
David Christie
Menlo Park, CA
and Halifax, VT