The NYTimes finally announced their online subscription plan. It’s $15/month, $20 for the iPad app, or $35 for some undefined all-access plan. They allow casual users to view 20 stories a month for free. I have a great deal of sympathy for newspapers. They deserve to be paid for their work, and the price is equivalent to 4 Starbucks lattes. The problem is most people browse different news sources and it’s annoying to have to pay for each one. It would be better if newspapers adopted the cable model: a single bill gives access to lots of news sources.
I wonder how this will effect Flipboard on the iPad. The NYTimes will allow links from Google, Facebook and Twitter for free. What about links from Flipboard which aggregates those Facebook(?) and Twitter links? What if I just spider the Times and stick the links on Twitter? I think they will put a limit on those links, too.
[edit]The WSJ charges $12/month and nothing extra for their iPhone and iPad apps. For the first year, it’s only $8/month. So why is the NYTimes charging so much more than the WSJ?
