Recently the New York Times announced that they will begin charging for access to news on NYTimes.com. Starting in 2011 users will be able to access a set number of news articles per month and there after will be charged. This announcement has created many discussions about this new policy. I believe that if the information has a value, then it should not be free. We pay for information subscriptions every month including TV cable, home internet connections, and broadband connections on our mobile devices. This pays for the infrastructure to deliver the data and there should also be a price for the actual data as well. The Times new policy will allow them to balance their advertising revenue with access fees.
All publishers have been facing the dilemma of fees for online access for a number of years. The Wall Street Journal has been providing electronic information for years now, even before the internet came along. When the internet made distribution to consumers possible they never even considered not charging for it. In an interesting interview of Gordon Crovitz, former publisher of the Wall Street Journal details this to Mark Logic CEO, Dave Kellogg.
The important distinction here is that the information has value, so it should not be free. Scholarly publishers have also been charging for access to information for years, first on CD-ROM and now the internet. Certainly the pay-for-access will remain and we will continue to pay for the valuable content that the publishers provide.
No comments:
Post a Comment