• by January 17, 2005

TO BE FREE OR NOT TO BE -- That is the question media muckety-mucks have been mulling for some time, especially newspaper publishers who've essentially been giving away their stores - and stories - online ever since the World Wide Web became a significant place to browse for news.

So it was not surprising to read BusinessWeek's coverage this week that the management of the New York Times Co. has been torn up over the issue and is seriously considering a shift to a paid model for its wildly popular NYtimes.com.

The truth is The New York Times has been wrestling with that issue ever since it introduced its Web edition with a free, ad-supported model. The question isn't so much whether the Times' digital edition is leaving potential online subscription revenues on the table - it is - so much as it is the concern that making its content available for free online is having a deleterious effect on its printed product. Why, after all, would some people pay to subscribe to the print edition when they could access the same content - indeed, more and fresher news - online for free?

We answered that question a number of years ago when after being life-long readers of the print edition, we dropped our print subscriptions and began consuming the Times online. And we've been waiting for the Times Co. to begin charging us ever since.

The truth is, we are hooked. The New York Times, whether in print or online, is indispensable to us, and something we would gladly pay a reasonable price for. And at this point, we'd pay to read it online, assuming the cost wasn't any greater, and ideally something less than the print edition. It's faster, easier to manipulate, copy, download, and route to friends, family, and colleagues. And it's easier to link to related news and information online.

We do read the Times differently online than we do in print. Online is much more of a "lean-forward" experience, and we find ourselves more in search mode, than the "laid-back" nature of reading print. The main consequence is that we find ourselves reading the Times much more quickly online, and we tend to skip some things - sadly - that we would have spent the time reading in print, like the editorials and Op-Ed pieces.

As for BusinessWeek's scoop, kudos to the folks at McGraw-Hill for getting out in front of that story, which is actually a far bigger one than just The New York Times, and speaks to the whole industry of online publishing, which is mainly still free and ad-supported.

From what we've been hearing, BusinessWeek didn't go far enough in its take, leaving the Times battle as an unresolved, internal debate. Our sources tell us it is no longer a matter of whether, but when and exactly how the Times will begin charging for its content online.

The debate over "whether," we are told, was resolved last year when New York Times Co. chief Russell Lewis announced his retirement, and Janet Robinson was named his successor. Along with that move, Scott Heekin-Canedy, a strong proponent of the shift to a paid online model, moved up the ranks, becoming president and general manager of The New York Times from senior vice president-circulation at the paper.

The most likely scenario is a hybrid one, in which the Times will test various tiers of free and paid content access online. After all, if the paper suddenly shut off the free news spigot altogether, and all at once, its online traffic and advertising base would plummet. The trick will be to find a balance that maximizes its online user and advertiser base, while preserving the value and integrity of its offline printed product.

The shift will be epic in news publishing circles and will be closely watched by members of the Online Publishers Association, which has been torn with the very same issues being debated within the Grey Lady.

After nearly a decade of training online news consumers that they should expect their products for free, how will this transition go over? The only way to find out for sure, is to shut the spigot and see what happens. If the Wall Street Journal, which launched its online edition as a paid subscription model, is any indication, some people will pay. Some people will not. The ones that do will be more qualified, and probably higher quality advertising targets, meaning the papers that follow that model will lose some traffic, but in the long run, may be able to boost their advertising rates to offset it.