Buh Bye New York Times

One of the dirty secret of the newspaper business is that people do not pay for the news.

People pay a portion of the cost of setting ink to paper, but the remainder of the cost of producing a physical copy, as well as the cost of producing the content is covered by advertising.

The problem is that the most lucrative part of advertising is the classified. at about $55 for 3 lines, it generates a lot of revenue.

Unfortunately, Craigslist is better and cheaper, so newspapers find their classified revenue shrinking.

Additionally, after years of playing the Wall Street game of cutting costs, meaning reporters and in depth stories, and quality in general, their product is less attractive.

In the case of the New York Times, this has been further complicated by the fact that they plunked down a huge amount of cash for their brand new narcissistic monument to the New York Times office building, so they find themselves with a cash flow problem.

It appears that they are looking at setting up a pay wall around the newspaper to generate the desired revenue.

They have forgotten the disaster that was Times Select, which shut down after 2 years, when they generated very little revenue, and their opinion pieces largely dropped of the map on the Internet.

People pay for the Wall Street Journal because it provides breaking financial news, which is something that people have traditionally been willing to pay for.

General news, probably not, and so I'll probably find other sources to link to.