Ifølge The Guardian, så vil The Times indføre betaling for nyheder og andet indhold i foråret 2010.
Dermed når man den deadline, som chefen Rupert Murdoch (Times hører under Murdochs News Corp) satte, som hedder senest sommeren 2010.
Jeg har tidligere taget spørgsmålet op, om vi virkelig bør se op til Rupert Murdoch, men den mulighed har man (desværre?) ikke, når man er en del af imperiet.
Hos The Times arbejder man med en abonnementsmodel (fast beløb, fri adgang) og en 24 timers adgang. James Harding, der er redaktør på The Times, mener, at dette vil styrke båndet med de loyale læsere:
He said the Times would also enhance its relationship with its most loyal readers through home delivery and a reward programme through the recently launched Times+ membership venture.
"Historically, newspapers have treated their best customers worst and their worst customers best," he said.
"We give the paper away to people who could not care less and we pay little or no attention to people who love it and read it every day."
På teknologi-bloggen TechCrunch er der imidlertid meget lidt begejstring at spore for The Times' idé i indlægget 'Operation Failure: Times Plans To Charge For One-Day Access To Online News', hvor man især går efter 24 timers modellen (som i mine øjne også er håbløs):
[...] everyone realized by now that people tend to cherry pick news content online based on their time and specific interests, and that there was quite some agreement around the fact that people vote with their wallets when given more individual choice (e.g. evolution of music album sales vs. single track sales). If you could choose between paying per single song stream rather than spend your money on 24-hour access to an entire album, which would it be?
Even if you still go out and buy the news as printed on actual paper and subsequently read every single article in it, how many people are like you, you reckon? And if you wanna read everything and everyone a daily newspaper has to offer anyway, why not just, erm, continue to buy the newspaper instead of paying for time-limited access to the digital version of it? Because the advertising alongside articles in the latter case is more interactive?
Og så er banen ligesom kridtet op, inden The Times vil til at have penge for deres indhold. Det skal blive spændende at se, hvordan det kommer til at gå. Jeg kender ikke nok til det britiske mediebillede til at kunne komme med nogle vildt bevingede ord, men jeg kommer ikke umiddelbart til at savne The Times.
Så er spørgsmålet bare, hvor mange andre, der har det på samme måde.
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