[Upd-discuss] Wired on BBC Creative Archive

[David H. Rothman]

> In book publishing myself, I appreciate such fears, but I'm
trying to deal with it in a progressive manner.

I appreciate Andy's interest in balance, quite in character for him. One
solution for the Times could be a *reasonably* priced subscription deal
that would offer complete access to all the archives as well as truly
full-strength RSS feeds and the existing topic- and keyword-based
searches. And maybe a daily .pdf-style package, too--even if PDF sucks
in many ways. 

Contents of the archive would be great for advertisers since the old
stories could nicely reflect readers' interests.

Meanwhile here's some more info, from ClickZ
(http://clickz.com/news/article.php/3327031). Online revenue for the NY
Times company appears to be $13 million for Jan.-Feb. of '04, up 40
percent from the same months in '03. I suspect that means well over $50M
a year, allowing for seasonal variations.

So that $6M from Lexis and others, even if it's just for just the actual
NYT site, rather than Boston Globe, etc., is not the be-all and end-all.
What's more, it's going to be less and less important--much less. 

In fact, the Times over the long run would fare much better with a pure
advertising model, with the content woven solidly into the fabric of the
Net and blog links *encouraged*. - David

David Rothman, for TeleRead.org | 703-370-6540
Web log: http://www.teleread.org/blog




-----Original Message-----
From: upd-discuss-admin@lists.essential.org
[mailto:upd-discuss-admin@lists.essential.org] On Behalf Of Andy Oram
Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2004 2:57 PM
To: Mlfveer@cs.com
Cc: David Tannenbaum; upd-discuss@venice.essential.org
Subject: RE: [Upd-discuss] Wired on BBC Creative Archive

By the way, I was just talking to a publisher about the New York Times
web site and heard some interesting statistics.

I was complaining to him that the Times decided to charge money for
accessing old articles. (Of course, free access is supposedly available
only to people in the U.S. in the first place.) I pointed out that the
NYT is a historical resource and an important reference point for
serious authors; now we can't link to it. (This doesn't mean I think the
NYT is objective or complete.)

My colleague said they get only a few hundred thousand dollars a year
from subscribers who access their content. But because the archives are
hidden, they earn over six million dollars a year selling it to such
services as Lexis.

It's good money, but I also think the policy reflects fear over what's
happening to the newspaper industry (and not just because people use the
Internet). In book publishing myself, I appreciate such fears, but I'm
trying to deal with it in a progressive manner.
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Oram  O'Reilly Media                     email: andyo@oreilly.com
Editor     90 Sherman Street                       voice: 617-499-7479
           Cambridge, MA 02140-3233                  fax: 617-661-1116
           USA                         http://www.praxagora.com/andyo/
Stories at Web site:
The Bug in the Seven Modules     Code the Obscure     The Disconnected
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