New York Times - Stupid, stupid, stupid....

I think it sounds like a good idea to me.

If they do the summaries right, they should be able to be indexed and show up in the engines for relevant keyword phrases.

So what's the problem? That they want to charge for the content? The fact is that they DO want to charge for the content, which is their perogative. So putting up summaries is the smart way to go. (As opposed to cloaking the content so that only the engines see it, but not the end users.)

I just don't understand why this is stupid, stupid, stupid. Please enlighten me!

...though we were all free market ecomonists here.

Perhaps the OP had over indulged himself in the weed ;)

Just because i don't think people will link to summaries Jill, i know i wouldnt. It's only one tiny, tiny step better than WSJ, who have become largely irrelevant online due to their closed content...

Though I personally hate sites that do this, I'm in agreement with Jill. I think that Peter is right when applying this to those of us who are on the web all day, every day. For the masses, however, this will be just another fish weir.

I've been subscribing to the NYT's online service for 3 or 4 years, mostly just to have access to the crossword (it's a lot cheaper than buying the paper), but I'm not happy with the way they've been making changes in the past couple of years.

First they about doubled the cost. Then they made the money I paid only for the crossword. I used to have full access to the archives as part of my subscription.

Of course they have a right to monetize their content however they choose to, but doubling the price and cutting the benefit of the purchase doesn't make for happy subscribers.

As far as having other sites link to the abstract pages which in turn link to the paid content, I doubt anyone's going to do that unless the Times starts up an affiliate program (I don't think they've got one yet).

I don't agree with them monetizing their archives. New content, yeah, that makes sense, and I'll even go so far as to say that they can monetize their last *year* of content. But beyond that seems stupid.

The 1861 census has just been published online in the UK.

Interest in these things is keen

Bet they got the raw data for virtually nothing from UK government.

...by almost every medical journal on the internet already. You get the abstract, and have to buy a subscription or pay a fee to see the article.

Where I think NYT is getting it wrong though is that they don't have high-end specialty industry content that professionals will pay for. They have news. Just plain news, and regardless of how hallowed their reputation may be, you'll be able to find an old news story about almost anything for free elsewhere.

And I disagree with grnidone about monetizing their new articles... it's even easier to find free-access coverage of new events.

Sure, but then users don't link because they don't have sites. So where are the inbounds going to come from? Non-geeks?

The web is a link (ergo, an attention...) economy. Perhaps the NYT doesn't feel they need to generate more attention.

Exactly. At which point the content with the most authoritative links has the most value to the publisher.

> where are the inbounds going to come from?

RSS feeds + aggregators?

http://weblogs.jupitermedia.com/meckler/archives/004119.html

He seems to spell it out, need to read the rest though.

Or put it another way, which I think meckler did, imagine how much money AOL have left on the table by not opening up their content.

Puts it well...

Again, the long tail changes the news publishing game. Over time, as Jackob Neilsen points out, most of the readership will come from the published archives. Without them, NYT loses authority. They lose it to sources who are making content available.

To whom do I link? A source, or an advertisment for a source?

I still don't understand the About.com buy. They simply need to get their strategy right in-house.

I don't think they will either, but so what? It's all on their site. They simply link to it from other pages of their site, right? There are zillions of pages out there that only have internal links. That's pretty standard for many sites.

Pages DO pass link pop and PR to and from their own domains.

So I guess I'm still confused as to why this is a bad idea (aside from the users who don't want to pay, of course).

They're competing for attention with open, free news.

Potentially, NYT can become more of an authority. They can be part news outlet, part historical record. They can form an attention hub. The can enrich society. If they can't figure out how to make money by being those things, other than pay-per-view, then there is no helping them.

SEO is a minor piece of the attention-generation puzzle. NYT now competes with every news outlet on the web, from bloggers to CNN, from London to Sydney.

For example, Bloggers, as a whole, drive a lot of traffic. They do not send traffic to sources that are locked-up. Lock the content up, lose all those visitors. To other news sites. Each and every day.

I agree with Rebecca MacKinnon.. Specifically - "Online news sites should stop thinking of themselves as "things" and more as "places."

Today's the day the new subscription policy went into effect. I get an email from the NYT every morning with links to major stories, and today the articles of the two regular columnists in the Op-Ed section has the little orange icon for TimesSelect on them.

I tried clicking through to one of the columns and got a one-sentence abstract and a note to either sign in or subscribe. so no more Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd, Bob Herbert or Frank Rich for me.

Really? Who cares now? And even fewer people will care in future. As far as I can see they provide a commodity for a price that you can get easily elsewhere for free. They need to persuade me otherwise and they just plain aren't. All they had was reputation for a small portion of the world. The less they are talked about and referenced the less reputation they will have to the point where the majority of people will forget they even existed. On the other hand other news sources will get referenced, used to support arguments in discussions, searched and consumed. Such as wikipedia and news.bbc.co.uk etc

I can't recall the last time I paid for news. Must be before my daughter was born. Can't imagine ever doing it again.

They need to get with the program. Old media just don't seem to get it. You know what, I won't be weeping into my cornflakes if they do dissapear.

You know, you realy should be having Fruit & Fibre for your breakfast, not cornflakes.

It loosens up the digestive system, and enables you to get through the day that much better.

See Threadwatch is not just educational its good for you too ;O) Being a realtively young chap though I dont really need all that fibre just yet ;O)