New York Times Online has made its archive free now. Previously you had to pay an annual or monthly fee, or you had to be an NYT subscriber. It makes economic sense. Selling paid content on the Internet has always been a big problem and biggest of the content providers have failed to charge for content. Keeping the content free and earning ad revenue is always a better option.
But do people even look at the ads? Normally when you go to a website such as the NYT you are deeply interested in reading the article and you grow an imperceptible blindness towards the banners and ads. Solution? The content and the context should always match.
Anyway, I think it is a good decision. Keeping the content blocked just because many people wouldn’t pay for it doesn’t make sense.
According to this blog post at Read/Write Web even Wall Street Journal under its new owner Rubert Murdoch is planning to make its online version freely available.
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