The NY Times has every right to charge for their old stories, but I wish they hadn't.
I've been collecting links for a couple of weeks in preparation for a series of posts on media and the broadband access monopolies. It turns out that the Times moved a bunch of really useful stories behind the barrier. If you want to read them, they'll cost $2.95 each, which I doubt you're willing to pay.
I think most publishers would get a higher NPV if they just gave their archives away, but the Times is a special case -- at least in 2003. I'll be more careful in the future about linking to them in the future. The SF Chronicle's Gate doesn't charge (for now), so I'll try to give them a little more link action.
Posted by bp at April 04, 2003 05:43 PM
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Its sad. If they actually analyzed their log files they probably would have realized that without the blog referrals their traffic would decrease which would have a similar effect on advertising revenue.
Posted by: keith knutsson on April 7, 2003 08:28 PMI agree. I think they're missing a huge opportunity in exchange for a modest revenue stream.
What they're doing is unclear. See Dave Winer's first and second followup notes.
