New York Times Co.’s Boston Globe Begins Charging Readers for Web Access
New York Times Co. (NYT), publisher of the namesake newspaper, will announce today that it’s starting a new website to generate revenue from online readers of its Boston Globe newspaper.
Until now, readers have been able to freely access content from the Boston Globe on Boston.com, a news and information website also owned by Times Co. Visitors to Boston.com will now have access to a limited number of stories from the Boston Globe newspaper, while the remainder will be available only to subscribers on BostonGlobe.com, the company said.
“The Boston Globe has never had its own digital front door,” Publisher Christopher M. Mayer said in an interview. “It’s always been integrated into Boston.com.” With the two websites operating separately, he said, “we’ve got an opportunity with different audiences and different brands.”
It will cost $3.99 a week to subscribe to the newspaper’s digital content on BostonGlobe.com. Subscribers to the print edition won’t have to pay for digital access. Summaries on the front page of the website can be seen free of charge, and customers who read stories through social media and search will receive the first click for free.
Boston.com, which is ad-supported and averages about 6 million unique visitors per month, will remain free, the company said.
Limited Access
With news consumers shifting from print to digital platforms, Times Co. introduced a similar Web-based subscription model in March for the New York Times newspaper, which requires online readers who view more than 20 articles per month to pay for access to content on NYTimes.com. Such so-called metered access won’t be an element of the BostonGlobe.com site, according to Mayer. Times Co., in an earlier statement, said 224,000 customers had subscribed to the NYTimes.com service by the end of June.
“I think what you’ll see around the country is most newspapers will adopt some kind of pay wall that is similar to what the Times, and now the Globe, have put in place,” John Morton, a Silver Spring, Maryland-based newspaper industry consultant, said in an interview. “They all now realize they made a grievous mistake years ago when they put everything on the Web for free.”
Times Co. fell 25 cents, or 3.4 percent, to $7.18 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The stock has declined 27 percent this year.
To contact the reporter on this story: Brett Pulley in New York at bpulley@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Elstrom in New York at pelstrom@bloomberg.net.
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