Times Newspaper Begins To Charge Online Readers For Content

[george]

The Times newspaper has begun charging readers to access its online content.

From now on, access to the Times and Sunday Times website will cost £1 per day, or £2 a week if readers sign up to a subscription.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/10480666.stm

[samtam]

It will be interesting to see if it's sustainable. I shall miss it, but I'm not paying that for it. There are alternatives, happily.

[gotlost]

Any newspaper that changes for an online subscription lose me and allot of others as customers and followers even on the soft version.

[raro]

guess this will be coming in the future. They need to cover their overheads and ad revenues are on the decline.

[Phil Conners]

I think there will be a lot less newspapers in business in the future.

[astral]

To be honest I prefer a real newspaper,

with all the little snippets that are on the various pages

alongside the main stories.

[keeniau96]

I used to check them out every morning, now nevermore.

[mickylonster]

I used to check them out every morning, now nevermore.

Switch to The Guardian !

[gmac]

They are not included in my home pages any more!

[bdenner]

IMO It's the sign of the times (excuse the pun). The print media is doomed and this is their out, a way to slide into the electronic media and exploit the growing power of the internet. It may take a number of years so they are trying it on one by one.

[p_brownstone]

As others have said, I used to check their Website as part of my daily "routine" but no more.

There are plenty of alternatives - this is a good site to find Online Newspapers, Magazines etc. :

http://www.refdesk.com/

Patrick

[bendejo]

The New York Times also announced they will begin charging next year. They tried this a few years ago and obviously it didn't fly. Good news for US Republicans I guess. The only thing that really distinguishes their content is named columnists and the occasional investigative report, otherwise all the mainstream news comes out of the same funnel.

In the mid 1990s everyone was trying to figure out how the 'new media' was going to generate revenue, and to everyone's surprise it fell back to the paid advertising model of print media. Some entities did ok by that, for a while...