Comments on: How to save the NY Times?

By: Tough love from Google and the US Post Office « Can someone please explain…?

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 06:23:19 +0000

[...] applied to online news that don’t involve the reader paying for their content. I proposed a few here in my blog back in June. From crowdfunding (read this great piece in the Columbia Journalism [...]

By: jlsimons

jlsimons — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 23:01:13 +0000

Thanks for the comment, FR. I don’t know that the times has ever tried micro-payments, since that’s a relatively new concept here in the states (though bigger in Europe and Asia). I do know that various organizations tried pay-for-content models in the early days of the Internet last century, and most abandoned those models under the mantra, “The Internet is Free.” But how long can that last? While websites like Google News disseminate other people’s news for free, news organizations are becoming economically unfeasible, and that means they’ll disappear. They are businesses after all, and it’s not like somebody will come and bail them out like the government or something.

By: Faithful Reader

Faithful Reader — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 22:01:09 +0000

While I think the fee idea sounds creative, (didn’t the NYT already try and reject something like this?)I think it would go over like the proverbial lead balloon — witness the lack of response to some of the above-mentioned posts I checked out. Isn’t that a sign of how they’d feel?

I haven’t a clue to the solution but I salute you for at least making an effort.

F.R.