The
New York Times today reports that its premium TimesSelect service has signed up 270,000 subscribers in less than two months. We have no basis on which to judge whether that figure is good
or bad (there are rarely any decent yardsticks to measure these kinds of things) but suffice to say, this here Minute is not one of those subscribers.
While we didn't weigh in on the
long-rumored launch of TimesSelect (so many others did it for us), we find no reason to pay to read Maureen Dowd, Thomas Friedman, and the other columnists, and rarely have a reason to hit the
archives.
In fact, we can access MoDo (as she's affectionately referred to by FishBowlNY's Rachel Sklar)--well, at least New York magazine's cover story on her--for free on the
Web, and the Times magazine carried a pithy excerpt from her book recently. We read the excerpt for free on NYTimes.com. We are not desperate to read the Times columnists on a
regular basis and can think of so many other things we'd prefer to pay for on the Web; the privilege of accessing TimesSelect is not one of them.
Meanwhile, the newspaper reports that
nearly half of those enrolled in TimesSelect are Times home-delivery subscribers. These subscribers receive access to TimesSelect as a benefit of their print subscription, while the other
half are online-only subscribers. More than 90 percent of those who initially signed up for the 14-day free trial have become paying subscribers. In the week before it launched, when TimesSelect
was priced at $39.95, more than 20,000 online-only subscribers signed up.
Commercial break: In case you forgot, or in case you want to sign up, TimesSelect is $49.95 a year or $7.95
monthly. You can get access to the Op- Ed columnists and select Business, Metro and Sports columnists of The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune. You can get
archives, previews of articles from Sunday's Times, multimedia packages, and other stuff. And there are some new TimesSelect features:
--MoDo's dialogue with readers
regarding her magazine piece on feminism.
--Tom Friedman responds to mail he has received asking why he supported the war in Iraq.
--Sports columnists Harvey Araton and Selena Roberts,
and deputy sports editor Kristin Huckshorn, hold roundtable discussions.
--Metro columnist Joyce Purnick offers insight on the implications of New York's mayoral race.
It would appear
to us that TimesSelect appeals to a very narrow slice of the liberal media elite--and certainly not to young people. Way to go!