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The New York Times was the first to announce that it will no longer be requiring its readers to pay for its TimesSelect service.
The Wall Street Journal followed suit with Walter Murdoch announcing that the Wall Street Journal Online will be offered free to its readers as well.
By making their content free, both papers predict a small loss in newspaper sales but both the NYT and the WSJ foresee a large increase in their online readership. By chosing to monetize their content through online ads and contextual search instead of a paid subscription model, both companies appear to agree that the paid subscription model was just not working.
In the face of easily accessible free news content all over the internet, it would be hard enough for the two companies to maintain their loyal readership and near impossible for them to convince new readers to pay for news on a subscription basis.
The one thing both the NYT and WST have going for them is quality content. They produce large amounts of content on a daily basis that people want to read, and they both have huge archives of content that they can open up to the public to serve ads.
I’d say this is good news for readers and good news for the longevity of both institutions.
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