NYT: New Subscription Service Takes Another Stab at Digital Profitability

The New York Times (NYT) announced this afternoon, "Times Reader will launch as a subscription service on March 27." Cost: $14.95/month or $165/year as a standalone service. But, as I hoped, "Times Reader will be free to home delivery subscribers." That's the right thing to do.

By putting a price on the Reader, The Times creates another stream of revenue, albeit a small one, to add to what it's generating from subscriptions to its Times Select service, and sales of archived articles. Piece by piece, these services add up. But not to a lot. And they don't answer the bigger question for the newspaper industry, how to survive the threat of the meme, "Information wants to be free on the Internet."

Just today, the San Francisco Chronicle's David Lazarus opined that, "It's time for newspapers to stop giving away the store. We as an industry need to start charging for ... use of our products online." He said such a move needs to be industry-wide, and that, "This is approaching a life-or-death struggle for newspapers, and an antitrust exemption may be the only way that the industry can make the transition to a digital future."

Viacom's (VIA) billion-dollar copyright claim against Google's YouTube (GOOG) helped Lazarus frame his thought. "We as an industry need to start charging for ... or at the very least controlling ... use of our products online."

Posting news aggregation sites like HuffingtonPost.com and DrudgeReport.com on his target board, the columnist believes newspapers should demand licensing fees for giving aggregators access to their content.