My mother has been reading the New York Times for, as far as I can tell, her entire life. She may have been born holding that newspaper. However, recently, she reads fewer and fewer articles out of the actual paper. Let's be honest, newspapers are messy and cumbersome and when you can pick up a quick and easy laptop and get the same things, why bother with the paper? Especially, when you have to pay for the paper. And by pay, I mean quite a lot--up to and over $300 a year. According to my mother, the only reason she has continued to pay is that she liked the crossword and the TV listings. About two weeks ago, the Times dropped the TV listings and only bothered to print a notice that they did so sometime in the last few days. Seeing as you can buy the crosswords in giant books at any bookstore, this makes me question the intelligence of the Times publishers.
In a tech heavy world, wouldn't you do everything you possibly could to keep readers buying your paper? Even though my mother may be unique in the things she wants from the newspaper I'm sure that there are other people who look for those similar quirky things that can only be found in print. Now they're taking away things from the print edition and not putting them online. What they may acheive by doing so is both losing subscriptions and chasing away faithful readers.
Many journalism classes talk about that serendipity factor of newspapers, when you might come across articles you wouldn't otherwise have sought out. However, I find that happens to me all the time online. Today I read an article on fortune cookies on the Times site that I never would have searched for. This only makes me repeat my question: Why should I pay?
I feel that this particular occurance is a perfect example of exactly what we've been talking about in class. The New York Times isn't making money off its readers anymore...why should I subscribe when it's all right here, for free. It makes me nervous about the future of this publication. They have been a dependable news source for decades and they don't seem to be helping themselves anymore. Besides their prestigious name, what is attracting new readers to their site? A partial answer to that question may be the simple fact that it is free. I wouldn't read the Times if I had to pay for it because I'm in college, and I'm poor. But I do, because it's free. So what we have here is a never-ending loop of "what do we do now". We get new readers because it's free, but it's free so we don't make any money. What a conundrum, huh?
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