Newsday.com moves to subscriber model ($260/year)

Source: Newsday

Beginning Wednesday, most of Newsday.com content will only be available to subscribers of Optimum Online, Newsday, or those willing to pay for it.

Those who are not customers of Optimum Online or the newspaper - both owned by Bethpage-based Cablevision Systems Corp. - will have to pay a $5 weekly fee. However, nonpaying customers will have access to some of newsday.com's information, including the home page, school closings, weather, obituaries, classified and entertainment listings. There also will be some limited access to Newsday stories.

Newsday described the move as one that would create a "pioneering Web model," combining the newspaper's newsgathering services with Cablevision's electronic distribution capabilities. About 75 percent of Long Island households are Newsday home delivery or Cablevision online customers or both, according to Newsday. Optimum Online customers total 2.5 million in the New York area, the paper said.

... Jack Myers of Jack Myers Media Business Report, a Manhattan-based economic research firm, said, "In the long term, it's a zero-sum game. Basically what you are doing is you are shutting off younger audiences from getting access and becoming fans of your content, so it strikes me as a pretty short-term protective measure that will be a great case study for the industry."

Read more: http://www.newsday.com/long-island/nassau/newsday-com-moves-to-subscriber-model-1.1539582

now it's just another pile of crap. Good luck with the subscriber based model.

for individual articles. People don't want to pay weekly or monthly subscription fees when they think they might not use them enough.

Create an easy, instant method for little cash transfers (25c, 35c, whatever) and you'll change the web.

will remain free. I think music is worth more than a news article because you can play it over and over again for years to come. A news article is old within a few hours, and rarely is unique (Corzine, McDonnell win!! Who would pay for that article?).

Back when I worked at a news site, in the early '00s, our corporate overlords toyed with this idea--and we weren't even a household name. Luckily the greedy bastids' idea got stomped on and it never happened. WHEN are the greedy bastids going to learn? As long as ANYone can get the same goddamned news on different, free sites, subscription sites will never fly. Why is that so hard to understand?? :banghead:

"pioneering Web model" wow what century are they living in?

Fortunately for most of us, Cablevision is pretty much limited to Long Island. They already wall-off News12.

The "O" is tinkering with this now, and they have nothing compelling enough to pay for, especially at 75/$2. A lot of staff was released that I happened to like and respect, with 6 major news organizations here including WBT Radio, the information will get out someway for free. It also doesn't help that your benefactor base of stories is headquartered in San Francisco and Washington DC.