New York Times Publisher Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger Jr. said the beleaguered paper may start charging for access to parts of its Web site, as the cash-strapped newspaper looks to shore up its faltering business.
Sulzberger didn’t give much in the way of detail but suggested that most of the site would remain free while readers would pay for some content.
With print advertising suffering steep declines, the Times and other newspapers are wondering whether it was a mistake to give away their content for free. So far, advertisers have been unwilling to pay the same ad rates for the Internet as they do for the printed copy.
“The immediate future looks, at a minimum, grim,” Sulzberger said during an event at Stony Brook University on Thursday. “Traditional revenue streams are anemic and getting worse.”
The Times has flip-flopped on the issue of whether to charge for its Web site. In 2007, the Times ended a subscription program, TimesSelect, which put some of the paper’s popular columnists and archives behind a pay wall.
Despite the failed experiment, Bill Keller, the Times’ executive editor, last month said that executives at the company continued to debate the right strategy for the Web.
The issue has taken on more urgency for the Times because of its precarious financial situation. The paper is burdened with more than $ 1 billion in debt. It has cut jobs, slashed its dividend and mortgaged its Midtown Manhattan headquarters to conserve cash.
Meanwhile, the sinking economy only adds to the pressure on publishers to rethink their online business model.