Barriers will go up at the NYT

So as predicted the paywall is coming to the New York Times.

This from the paper itself

Starting in early 2011, visitors to NYTimes.com will get a certain number of articles free every month before being asked to pay a flat fee for unlimited access. Subscribers to the newspaper’s print edition will receive full access to the site.

and some food for thought from Chris Anderson

there’s more to the New York Times’ decisions on meters and paywalls than just the question of whether the strategy will succeed economically. There are questions about how the internet has already changed the Times, and how the dawning world of niche-reader taxation will change journalists’ ideas about what they do and who they write for. And there are questions about how we ourselves see the “public” we are a part of. We live in a world where were our “nicheness” has never been more obvious, and one of the great questions in the years ahead is whether we are still capable of seeing ourselves as a part of something more. In order to do so, I think we need to radically rethink what we mean when we say the word “public.” Down with structural notions like “public spheres,” or even phrases “networked publics!”

New York Times photo is a question of ethics

The above image from yesterday's New York Times has created some controversy under the topic of ethics.

It shows a teenager driving at 60 miles an hour with both hands steadily gripping a phone, while the lone limb of a passenger reaches over to steer the speeding car.

According to Blake Fleetwood,the photographer Dan Gillsaid he shot the picture on another assignment for the NYT last November for a story about teenagers and HIV.

"I tagged along with three students and the driver was texting. It's not often we as journalists are allowed into someone's personal life.
"Is it safe? Probably not, but as journalists we are not here to judge or direct, only to observe and to tell the story"

Oops-New York Times let Watergate slip

The New York Times had the first scoop on Watergate before the Washington post but let it slip.

That's according to an article in the paper this morning which says that

almost 37 years after the break-in, two former New York Times journalists have stepped forward to say that The Times had the scandal nearly in its grasp before The Post did

One of the journalists concerned says that two months after the break in during a lunch meeting

the acting director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, L. Patrick Gray, disclosed explosive aspects of the case, including the culpability of the former attorney general, John Mitchell, and hinted at White House involvement.

but

In the days after that 1972 lunch, the Times bureau was consumed by the Republican convention,

They must feel like the man from Decca who turned down the Beatles

NYT enters the realms of hyper local

so the New York Times is to step into the domain of the local bloggers.

This post over at Tech Crunch seems to confirm it.

the subject matter will include “cultural events, bar and restaurant openings, real estate, arts, fashion, health, social concerns and anything else that goes on in the ‘SoHo of Brooklyn.’”

and according to Jim Schachter, editor for digital initiatives at The New York Times,it will

sell ads to local merchants using our telesales and self-serve ad solution. Our two pilot sites are staffed with full-time NYTimes reporters.

He though stresses that this is not necessarily a viable proposition

Would people pay to be associated with us? Would there be enough revenue that some split between us and a non-NYT blogger would work? I’d love to know what readers here think.

Ht-Nieman Lab

How the New York Times could profit for selling online for $1 a month

Over at Poynter Online, Jim Romenesko is looking at the business model for the New York Times a paper which he describes as

daily miracle of fresh, smart, crucially important content.

which is worth saving beacause

saving it can become a model for saving other quality journalism.

And now he adds

the Times has done so much so well to build its online offerings it's time to turn the dynamics around -- by getting paid for that content, while using the Internet to eliminate the huge costs of producing and delivering it. The Internet should be a publisher's dream, not nightmare.

So here is the model

Charge its 20m unique monthly visitors a $1 a month which would produce $240m in new annual income.

Of course it misses a point that a payroll not matter how samll would probably turn away many of those unique visitors but he gets around this by planning the following

1.To help preserve the Times' search results, the headline and first paragraph of each article will appear online (and on mobile and other electronic devices) for free.

2.All online articles will cost 10 cents each to read in full, with simple, one-step purchases powered by an I-Tunes-like Journalism infrastructure.

Would it work.Well read the full content for a more detailed explaination but I wonder how much a paywall would put the barriers up for the general browser.

Nevertheless an interesting proposition?

Top 10 US newspaper websites

The Biving's report has just produced its top 10 American newspaper sites

Newspapers selected were among the 100 largest in the U.S., and in addition to being judged by their abundance of web features, were graded on design and easy usability.

Top of the list was the New York Times which the report says

manages to combine classic style with managing a frequent onslaught of new web features,

closely followed by the Washington Post which whose home page it describes as crowded but buried beneath it

are some of the best efforts at direct user interactivity to be found among newspaper websites