The New York Times has recently been the subject of scrutiny, after it was announced that a metered pay plan would soon be applied to its online content. As of right now, registration to the NYT online is still free of charge, giving users access to most areas of the website. However, fees are required for the site’s Premium Archive, Premium Crosswords, and Times Reader features.
The website, like those of most online news publications, is constantly being updated, keeping readers aware of the very latest breaking news. Much of the site’s content is drawn from its printed publication. Each night, the national edition of the next morning’s newspaper is uploaded. This content will later be accessible online via article archives, which contain stories dating back to 1851 (those dating back to 1987 are free…older articles require fees). However, in a disclaimer, the NYT explains that they “cannot guarantee that every article from every edition will appear on the Web site. Features that are unavailable via the website include the auction sales and merchandise offerings from the Classified section and the business opportunities portion of the Sunday Business Section.
In addition to this content, the NYT boasts of many other “web exclusives.” These can be as simple as daily emails of major headlines, or as interactive as their newest feature, the publication’s own social network. Known as TimesPeople, it is described as “a great way to discover things on NYTimes.com that you might not otherwise have found and to share your discoveries with other NYTimes.com readers.” Essentially, the network is an outlet for users to exchange NYT content, ranging anywhere from articles to videos to blog posts to movie ratings.
Finally for those of us hoping to carry the newspaper format into the future, the NYT has introduced (in addition to its electronic edition) Times Skimmer, a browser based application that “provides the experience of spreading out a newspaper and paging through it.”
It is clear that in its “web exclusives” the NYT is ahead of the game…but what remains to be seen is whether this will be enough to keep users coming back, even when they have to pay to do so.
[...] examining the site’s unique web features, I learned of several new ways they have been sharing the news, such as TimesPeople and Times [...]