. . . into the paid business. The FT (paid subscription required) says the NYT is "preparing the ground" to charge $30/$60 year for access to its website.
The news biz must go this way. The big problem for many papers is their primary content comes from the wire services, and this is so widely available that no one will pay. The NYT generates enough unique product to make it work. But even for a brand like the NYT, it will not be easy to resist the pressure from the information-wants-to-be-free crowd.
I am happy to see this because perhaps it will give the paying customers more clout. After reading it for years, I gave up the NYT a decade ago for philosophical reasons -- every story I read in an area about which I knew something was slanted in an anti-free market, pro-statist direction. So I assumed that areas about which I am ignorant received the same treatment, and I decided to cease being systematically misled.
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