For the NYT's sake, I hope its new digital subscription system works, but all I know is that I don't expect to participate

They know that, faced with an unsustainable economic model, they've got to do something. I feel for them, and for us -- even those of us who bad-mouth it incessantly have to wonder how news coverage would survive the loss of the NYT.

by Ken

I've been meaning to talk about the New York Times's coming "digital subscription plan" for the website, and now here we are only a weekend away from the big day when everything changes, this Monday! It's a plan, as you probably know, under which the site remains wholly free to home-delivery customers and while offering all others a modest amount of content free and beyond that for-pay. My problem in writing about it is that I really don't have much to say.

Just to be clear what the new system will be, I found a succinct explanation by Paul Smurl, vice president for paid products at NYTimes.com, in answer to one of the reader questions he's been answering about it (supplementing the existing online digital subscription FAQ):.

Q. I previously paid an annual subscription fee of $50 for electronic access. Then The Times announced it was moving to an "ad revenue business model" and no fees would apply. Now, two years later, subscriptions are back. How does The Times justify its change to a subscription model? Thanks for consideration of this question. By the way, I was plenty OK with the $50/year, however, two years later going from $50 to $180/year raises questions about The Times's direction and how it may affect the readers.

-- Stephen H. Gorski

A. You are referring to Times Select, which launched in 2005 and was discontinued in 2007. As you might recall, your subscription to TimesSelect allowed you online access to Times opinion columnists and the remainder of the site was open. The plan we are launching now is very different. It allows for a generous amount of digital content free for all readers (up to 20 articles, section fronts, etc.) but asks users to pay for full access to the site. The “basic” plan that costs $195 a year also includes access to a smartphone app, something that wasn’t available in 2005. We’re confident that the frequent users of NYTimes.com will find great value in our current site, which includes not just high quality written journalism but also video, blogs, slide shows and other features that enhance our ability to keep you informed.

Now we have not only the basic outline of the new system, as well as an explanation of how it differs from the unlamented Times Select. Now, really, the new plan raises two quite different questions:

(1) Is this a good idea?

(2) Will it work?

To illustrate how different these questions are, consider that, hypothetically, it's possible to answer yes to (1) and still have no idea about the answer to (2). For the record, pressed to give short answers, mine to both would be an emphatic "I dunno." But that doesn't stop me from having thoughts on the subjects.

(1) IS THIS A GOOD IDEA?

I imagine to a lot of confirmed online habitués the answer will go beyond a simple "No" to "How dare they?" However, as much as I've enjoyed free access to all that content, especially in the several years since I gave up home delivery of the paper, I have to recognize that it's preposterous and ultimately economically impossible to be giving all that content away.

But then, this same preposterousness that seems to me inherent in much of the thinking about the future of the Internet and print media. Once consumers are accustomed to free content, how do you ever persuade them that "free" is not necessarily a fair price for content such as the NYT -- for all my well-registered grievances with it -- provides. In the simplest terms, is it really not obvious to one and all that if the company can't generate revenue from the stuff it publishes, it can't afford to continue publishing the stuff?

I'm not absolutely alone in worrying about this, but I recognize that those of us who do are standardly written off as old fuddy-duddies, incapable of appreciating that the Brave New Media World sets its own norms, and will develop its own economic model and forge ahead. The thing is, beyond this blithe assurances, I haven't gleaned any hint of what that new model might be, and trust me, I've been keeping my eyes and ears open. There's plenty more that can be said on the subject, and maybe we'll come back to it, perhaps even tomorrow, but for our immediate purposes it seems to me important to see that if you're the NYT, seeing nothing but shrinking revenues from your print product, you're grappling with an economic model that is simply (to use the fashionable word) unsustainable.

YES, YES, BUT (2) WILL IT WORK?

I could be cute and say it depends what you mean by "work." For example, even if it doesn't work great the way you or I would define working great, I suspect that the Times Company, which is known to have taken this dramatic step with grave reservations, and great dissension within its corporate ranks, has to commit itself to making it work, and may not be able to afford to pull the plug as it did with Times Select. They may simply have no other visible options.

They seem to have put a lot of thought into this, trying to come up with a system that's reasonably fair, and then developing and (so they say) testing the technology to actually make the system work as of Monday. It seems that the much more modest Times Select system was fraught with operational problems that contributed to its unworkability. But to get back to the question, I guess I might say that for their sake I hope it works. And for all our sakes as well, because however unsatisfactorily the NYT may perform the information-gathering job it's taken on, nobody else is prepared even to give it a shot.

In the sense that you or I might mean by "work," though, I don't see the scheme working. Sure, a fair number of people will subscribe, but I'm guessing that hordes more won't. They ("we"?) are just too used to getting that content for free, and are apt to decide that that magic number of 20 really can satisfy all their NYT needs. So the company will take in a bunch of money, but at the cost of a serious loss of visibility, and possibly even influence -- neither exactly a boon to the newspaper's continued pertinence or survival.

For what it's worth -- likely not much -- I can't imagine that I'll be subscribing. I already undergone my NYT withdrawal when, as I mentioned, I discontinued home delivery, no longer able or willing to deal with the daily anxiety of wondering whether I would have a paper when I got downstairs to my building lobby. (The fact that I never knew whether missing papers had been stolen or never delivered only added yet an additional layer of anxiety.) At first I assumed I would buy the paper every morning. I didn't. (By the way, if you're wondering whether this might qualify you for a free digital subscription, the answer, Mr. Spurl tells us is thanks for your loyalty but uh-uh. ("We do encourage you to take advantage of the large amount of free content that will still be available to you on NYTimes.com and on our mobile apps.") Then I assumed I'd be checking the website home page every morning. I didn't do that either.

I'll be able to manage Paul Krugman's eight or nine columns a month with my 20 free articles, and perhaps I can economize by getting to them via links. (Non-Times links, that is. Mr. Spurl informs us that clicking on a link in one of the paper's e-newsletters will definitely count. The good news is that you can go back to a piece you've already been "charged" for for free.) I'll be sorry not to be able to check out PK's blog, though. (Mr. Spurl informs us that while access to the home page and to the front pages for all newspaper and blog sections will be free, actual posts, including blogposts, will count toward your "20.") The truth is, though, that I often go a couple of months without remembering to check the Krugman blog.

Actually, I suspect that the NYT executives who advocated and designed the plan weren't counting on me. Consider this Q-and-A:

Q. I'll never have a smartphone or an iPad and don't want to pay for access on those devices. Will there be a computer-only plan?

A. At launch, we have chosen to offer subscription packages that combine Web reading with other platforms. This is based on research we conducted last year with a large number of our readers, which demonstrated that many Times readers preferred to have access on multiple platforms and devices.

Meaning that even in the cheapest package you're paying for smartphone access whether or not you have any intention of using it. Like I said, I guess they weren't expecting my business anyway.

So, as you see, while I turned out to have stuff to say, very little of it contributes to actual answers to the two actual questions. I do wonder, though, what everyone else is thinking about this development. At least come Monday I'm expecting to have a little extra time every day.

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