Saturday, April 4, 2009

hello NYT, who does your marketing?


I remember when I first read the New York Times online. I thought to myself that it was far more convenient to view the news during my breaks at school than it was for me to go out of my way to buy a paper and then find a good place to read it. I enjoyed sharing interesting stories with friends and family as well.. something that I probably wouldn't have done before.

Stating the obvious, environmentally speaking, reading the news online makes a lot more sense.

From a financial viewpoint, I'd like to think that there are just as many people, if not more, reading a given paper day to day over the internet. What then, has prohibited these companies from coming up with a way to profit from their online news source? I find it rather odd that if I choose to read the NYT in print, that I have to pay for it, and if I read from the internet, most of it is free. Doesn't it stand to reason that you would create some sort of online subscription?

I suppose some obstacles that newspapers would face in charging people to read their materials, is that there are so many news sources out there writing about the same thing. I subscribe to several news feeds, and it amazes me how each one reports pretty much the same exact story and headline when it comes to the bigger topics. If NYT charged, and Reuters didn't, well then I guess you'd just go find your news there?

At the end of the day, I'm wondering how these huge media moguls will continue to provide us with news coverage if subscriptions just continue to dwindle.

1 comment:

Dean said...

IMHO

It's the changing face of the internet. "Printed media is going to become obselete", we are often told. I seem to recall that VHS videos was going to be the death to cinema, and REC+PLAY buttons on tape decks would kill music.

I do feel that there will be casualties eventually, but I think the big guns will still be firing - and making a healthy profit too.