Nickles for news? New York Times to begin charging online.

News today that the New York Times is going to start charging for some content on its Web site marks a major shift in the structure of dissemination of news online for major media outlets.

We’ve known pay-for-content models for online news have been coming for some time. Though I love the fact that anybody anywhere can access great reporting at no cost, it’s clear this model is not going to be sustainable in the long run for newspaper companies. The actual printed newspaper is currently dying a slow (although rapidly accelerating) death, and newspapers are hemorrhaging money each year. Unfortunately, so are many other industries, causing the decline in advertising (both online and in print).

More and more people are not receiving any newspaper or magazine at home nor buying them at newsstands. People are getting their news online. And with the rise of e-readers, the physical newspaper is becoming more archaic by the day. As a journalism grad, former newspaper reporter and news junkie, I’m somewhat embarrassed to say that I don’t get any newspapers or magazines at home. I do pick them up on occasion, but I get the vast majority of my news electronically.

Newspapers have long made their revenue on ad sales, but that doesn’t appear feasible presently. Some of the lost revenue needs to be made up with subscription fees for e-news. The Times is reportedly favoring a metered system, where consumers would be asked to pay a membership fee after reading a certain amount of free content. A model that interests me the most is a pay-by-the-article structure, where you would register with a payment method and pay maybe 5-10 cents per article, similar to an iTunes model.
Lots of questions surround the concept of paying for online news content. After having content for free at their fingertips for so long, will consumers be willing to pay, or will they simply turn to television news and free blogs in increasing numbers? How will this affect the sharing of news on Twitter and Facebook, where an increasing number of people get their news from links shared by media outlet accounts and friends? Can newspapers survive the initial drop in online readership that’s likely to occur, especially if online advertisers begin jumping ship? Nobody seems to have a reliable answer, but I sincerely hope we can find one before we lose more good reporters to layoffs and good newspapers (in print and online) to bankruptcy.