The Timeselect online venture was a raging failure for Executive Editor Bill Keller when he attempted to make people pay to see certain features of his paper online back a few years ago. I mean, outside of a few people, who would really want to pay to read the bilge The Newspaper Of Record promulgated?

So, what is Bill Keller trying to do? That's right! He wants to take another drink from the stadium urinal of failure. Only this time, he wants to chug a whole case of FAIL.

New York Times Co. may charge for access to its flagship newspaper’s Web site less than two years after terminating an earlier online-subscription service.

The company is studying whether to start charging for all or some of the content on nytimes.com, as well as other options, Executive Editor Bill Keller said ..... Most of the site is free.

“A lively, deadly serious discussion continues within the Times about ways to get consumers to pay for what we make,” he said. “Really good information, often extracted from reluctant sources, truth-tested, organized and explained -- that stuff wants to be paid for.”

The third-largest U.S. newspaper publisher, which posted a 48 percent decline in fourth-quarter profit, is cutting jobs and selling assets as advertising and circulation dwindle. .....

In 2007, the newspaper scrapped an online-subscription service called Times Select that generated about $10 million in revenue annually. The service limited the number of readers available to advertisers, said Keller.

“The lesson of that experiment, however, was not that readers won’t pay for content,” he said, pointing out that News Corp.’s Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times have paid- subscription Web sites.

Yup. Keep drinking the FAIL.  

Posted by: eddiebear at 10:58 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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