Let me start out by saying that I enjoy reading articles from the New York Times -- I have their app on my phone and their web app installed in Chrome (my browser of choice). They have their bias like any other news outlet, but typically they have great articles on the whole.
That said, they are really starting to piss me off.
Using their Chrome app or Android app, I can view any article I want to. However, when going to their website, I constantly find myself up against a wall demanding I register. The Times, like so many other companies caught in ageing and crumbling markets, does not know how to deal with the rise of the Internet.
You can see it everywhere. From the major networks blocking Google TV to the infighting going on over at Hulu, the old media companies are doing everything they can to hold onto old revenue streams as they dry up. The Times stills thinks it can be the national source of news it used to be in decades past. That business model is dead and isn't coming back.
It is no coincidence that the majority of the world's most innovative companies are centered around the web. Google, Apple, Facebook, Skype, and countless others are constantly pushing the envelope in cyberspace. The future is not in walled gardens of content, it is in open sharing of information. If you can't find a business model that works for the 21st Century, maybe you shouldn't be doing business.
I'm not saying that all content must be free -- that would prevent people and companies from putting the time and effort into making high-quality content. But if you are going to charge someone (or make someone go through the hoops of registering for your site), you have to provide a service that no one else is offering. If the Times wants to charge money for their paper, they had better be doing a hell of a lot more than just reporting the news. They need to be breaking the news, making the news, and providing expert analysis on the news so that they create value and customers want to pay them for their service.
Stop thinking about protecting old, wilting revenue streams. Start making news revenue rivers.
Change or die.
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