NYTimes "Gets It"

The NYTimes gets it! It is about making content available to people to use, and they will use it! As the google example has shown (for better or worse), advertising is enabling content owners to trade eyeballs for content. I had long been a reader of the Times online, reading all sorts of stuff. But when they launched their TimesSelect section, I no longer could read the key articles, so basically stopped visiting the site (except when Google News took me there). Now, I think I'll be back. Op-eds for free! Great. Old articles for free. Even better.
This isn't much of a big brain idea either really. Consider the Rick Rubin article I talked about in a previous post. This was being passed around in emails as full text of the article and posted all over the web. But if you went to the NYTimes.com site, you couldn't read the article unless you paid. So the result of that was the people were reading the article, but not on NYTimes.com, and the Times was losing valuable CPM eyeballs.
So good on ya, NYT for realizing what is happening. (Read the news on the news below).

NY Times to End TimesSelect, Open Free Archives
Submitted by Mark Hefflinger on September 17, 2007 - 3:14pm.

New York - The New York Times announced on Monday that it will shutter its TimesSelect subscription service, which had kept older articles and its roster of op-ed writers in a pay-to-view area of its website, opting instead to open its archives to potential advertising revenue.

The TimesSelect service cost users $7.95 per month or $49.95 per year, and was free to print subscribers and some students.

As of Wednesday, the Times' entire archives between 1851 and 1922, and from 1987 to the present will be available for free, along with some select content from 1923-1986.

The company said that TimesSelect, which was launched in September 2005, had met expectations, drawing 227,000 paying subscribers out of a total of 787,000 overall, and generated about $10 million a year in revenue.

The first sponsor of the opened areas on NYTimes.com will be American Express, the company said.