Why nytimes.com should charge a subscription fee

The New York Times is one of mankind's great contributions. The paper not only features outstanding writing, terrific investigative reporting, and engaging, interesting, intelligent opinions and news, it does so consistently every day. It is one of a handful of newspapers that provides content so truly unique and special that people across the country (and throughout the world), not just from New York, are willing to pay for it with their own remote subscriptions. Except they don't have to. Despite the fact the paper is for sale in virtually every major city across the country (and many worldwide), subscriptions for the Times, like virtually every other newspaper, have been declining. With the recession and the related decrease in advertising revenue, and the rise in paper and other costs, the Times has gotten squeezed and as a result has sold assets and cut back staff. Thus the paper's competitive advantage, its world class reporters, are under siege as revenue decreases while costs have risen. Online ad revenue hasn't come close to picking up the slack, and the economy, once again, hasn't helped with online sponsorships.

My brother-in-law lives in Texas, graduated from Stanford, and subscribed to the Times for years until he decided that it wasn't worth it. Every article, op ed piece, review, photo (and many additional articles, pictures, videos, as well as blogs not available in the print edition) could be viewed for free at nytimes.com. In addition, the archives are free, so he can look up any article written over the last 20 plus years on any topic with the search engine. Going to Italy and want to look up that story you saw a few months (years) back on Turin - you can find it in seconds.

My mother once said (in another context), why buy the cow if they're giving away the milk for free. Rupert Murdoch announced after he purchased the Wall St. Journal that he was going to eliminate subscriptions and build up the advertising revenue by opening up wsj.com and building traffic. Then he started looking at the numbers, and even before the economy tanked not only decided to continue with the hybrid free/paid business model, he invested in pushing subscriptions. The fact is there is no Internet law or sacred truth that all content should be free - and in fact there is significant technical and business to business content that is currently offered only with a subscription. The Times has terrific content which people should (and will) pay for, and the company needs that revenue stream to insure that they can continue to invest the resources to deliver their best in class product every day. In fact, the Web has added the additional burden of delivering updates and new content as news happens through the day and night, requiring more journalists to cover a truly 24 hour news cycle, not to mention managing blogs and adding videos, both of which are unique to the web.

As you can see, I love the New York Times. I'd hate to think that the product's best years are behind it, and that we will lose one of the best sources of news and analysis in the world. So if they charge a subscription fee, I'm happy to be one of the first to sign up.