I’ve hit my limit in the price of the New York Times. It’s going to $1.25 per day. It costs me almost as much as the train ride on which I read and usually finish it. I will switch to reading it online and on the train I’ll read the New York Post. And in the afternoon, when I used to read the Post on my return trip, I’ll watch my iPod. I had a great time tonight watching Weeds on it.
Jeff, doesn’t the ITunes download of a WEEDS episode cost almost as much as the Times? And don’t you have to subscribe to Times Select in order to access all the content on the site? Doesn’t this net out to more than just buying the paper?
Good choice for the pod, BTW. Can’t wait for Season 3 to begin.
Wow. You have exactly the same newspaper-reading routine as I do. I only use a Nano, though, so I won’t be able to do the video thing unless I spring for an iPhone.
But I agree – that extra quarter puts it over the edge.
Jeff, don’t worry. The Times still does great international and political coverage, but the rest of it is falling behind sites like yours. In other words, it’ll soon need you more that you need it. Speaking of which, did you see Maureen Dowd’s editorial today on Hillary’s Sopranos video? Dowd so completely misses the point that I felt a little sad for her.
I agree that $1.25 is too much for the dead tree version. Check out http://www.nytimesriver.com on your handheld…
I was surprised at how much I would pay for a newspaper when traveling overseas with little access to the Internet. I think I paid around $4 for a daily International Herald Tribune and didn’t think twice about it. Of course, the value would be considerably lower given more choices for news and entertainment like I face day to day at home.
more importantly, how come the blog-meister is still commuting? surely an internet entrepreneur should be working online at home?
And you read the Post for what?
I guess it most be the in depth international and national reporting they do and not page 6…
No Quarter for New York Times…
Jeff Jarvis is dropping his subscription to the dead tree version of the NYT because they’re raising prices by a quarter a day.
What’s interesting is it’s chief rival in terms of national prestige, WaPo, has gone the opposite route….
Weeds rules!
[...] second thought, the Times isn’t raising its price nearly high enough. $1.25? Hell, make it $2.50 a day. [...]
It seems a strange argument to be making that the NYT is so expensive that you’d rather use a $300 iPod. A year’s worth of NYT on the train would come out to about the same total expenditure, and in my opinion, you’d be a lot better off plunking down the buck and a quarter for a great paper than spending hundreds of dollars on the latest techno-toy.
That latest NY Times price increase should be $1.30 per copy … merely to match the official U.S. inflation rate from their last newspaper price hike in 1997.
So why get so annoyed at the new $1.25 price (??)
People who do not understand basic economics are usually called ‘politicians’ — although most in the MSM also qualify.
The NY Times has long been a champion of government debasement of the U.S. Dollar thru deliberate currency-inflation… so it’s fair for them to directly suffer inflationary consequences, like the rest of us.