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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SiouxPal who wrote (159677)	2/4/2009 4:39:53 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 361688

New York Times Considers Charging for Its Web Site (Update3) By Greg Bensinger Feb. 3 (Bloomberg) -- New York Times Co. may charge for access to its flagship newspaper’s Web site less than two years after terminating an earlier online-subscription service. The company is studying whether to start charging for all or some of the content on nytimes.com, as well as other options, Executive Editor Bill Keller said today in an online question-and-answer session. Most of the site is free. “A lively, deadly serious discussion continues within the Times about ways to get consumers to pay for what we make,” he said. “Really good information, often extracted from reluctant sources, truth-tested, organized and explained -- that stuff wants to be paid for.” The third-largest U.S. newspaper publisher, which posted a 48 percent decline in fourth-quarter profit, is cutting jobs and selling assets as advertising and circulation dwindle. It’s seeking buyers for its stake in the Boston Red Sox baseball team and a portion of its Manhattan headquarters building. In 2007, the newspaper scrapped an online-subscription service called Times Select that generated about $10 million in revenue annually. The service limited the number of readers available to advertisers, said Keller. “The lesson of that experiment, however, was not that readers won’t pay for content,” he said, pointing out that News Corp.’s Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times have paid- subscription Web sites. Red Sox, Skyscraper New York Times hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to help sell its minority stake in the Red Sox and it’s in talks with investment company W.P. Carey & Co. for a sale-leaseback deal involving its main office that could raise as much as $225 million. The publisher faces the expiration of a $400 million credit facility in May. Keller said the company was considering charging readers for each page they click on or making the newspaper available on a wider variety of portable electronic devices, as it is on Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle. “Some people are paying for the Times online,” the executive editor wrote. “Just not enough of them. So far.” New York Times gained 24 cents to $5.10 at 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares have lost 70 percent in the past 12 months. To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Bensinger in New York at gbensinger1@bloomberg.net Last Updated: February 3, 2009 16:22 EST