The New York Times is counting the ways it could charge readers for eyeballing its content online.
In an out-of-town meeting, CEO Janet Robinson said the Times is considering three options. It could charge “membership fees,” charge as people read or put prices on special content.
She said it could also institute a combination of the three strategies. The paper will likely shift from free to paid Web content this fall.
The Times tried charging for content a couple of years ago, offering access to certain stories only with a TimesSelect subscription. That project was killed in 2007.
Robinson was in Worcester, Mass. on Thursday to confirm to employees at its regional newspaper — the Telegram & Gazette — that online charges would probably apply to all the company’s Web sites.
On another crisis, Robinson continued to hedge her answers on whether the Times would keep pressing for the sale of its Boston Globe and the Worcester paper.
Both have been on the block for months, but Robinson said the owners, the Sulzberger family, might also hold onto the papers, which together lost more than $1 million a week last year.
“Our hand is not being forced to sell,” she told the employees, adding that retaining the papers would be based on an improvement of their finances. Paul Tharp