NYTimes to Start Charging Online `Very Shortly'

The New York Times will start charging readers for online access “very shortly,” Chairman and Publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. said in London Wednesday, according to a story by bloomberg.com.

The daily will introduce a “metered” model based on one used by the Financial Times newspaper that allows readers to view some articles for free each month, he said at the FT Digital Media & Broadcasting conference. He declined to elaborate on when the model would be introduced.

“We can no longer afford to have iPad and iPhone apps for free,” Sulzberger said. “The metered model will still allow people to engage with your journalism when they are not deep loyalists, and still make ad dollars from that.”

The New York Times Co., which publishes the namesake newspaper and owns magazines, TV and radio stations, reported a 26 percent decline in fourth-quarter profit and lower revenue as print advertising and circulation revenue continued to shrink. The newspaper is following peers like the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal into charging for online content as print advertising drops and readers increasingly move online.

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