How the New York Times can fight back and win: a reprise

The Times did make one big try to monetize nytimes.com, but that turned into the flop called New York TimesSelect, which put the paper’s columnists behind a subscription wall. Only about two percent of nytimes.com users signed up for the premium service, which cost $7.95 a year or $49.95 yearly. The $10 million in revenue that TimesSelect reeled in was more than offset by potential long-term traffic losses because some of nytimes.com’s most popular features were no longer available on search engines. The walls of TimesSelect came down in September 2007, two years after it was launched.

The big mistake of TimesSelect, beyond ghetto-izing 98 percent of nytimes.com users, was trying to monetize a mass product, which is what Times columns are, even if they bear the marquee names of Paul Krugman or Maureen Dowd or Tom Friedman. What the Times ought to be doing is monetizing all the resources of its considerably talented staff, which includes not just the renowned names on op-ed columns but scores of reporters, critics and editors who are treasure trove of valuable intelligence on any number of subjects, elevated or lowly, or know where to find it.

Here’s how that could be done:

Newyorktimes.com launches TimesPlus – a premium service that gives subscribers access – literally – to the minds of the entire Times newsroom staff, which includes more than a thousand information experts.

Let’s say you’re planning a trip to New York. You would complete a checklist where you list all your preferences – everything from hotel (e.g., small, non-convention, mid-priced, convenient to theater district and Madison Avenue shops) to hot but unheralded shops and attractions. Your preferences would be fed into a continually updated database to which the entire Times editorial staff would, as part of their jobs, contribute the latest information (and maybe gossip). You would get back responses to all your preferences, and also an advisory listing discounts your handsomely embossed, computer-chip-embedded TimesPlus subscriber card would give you at New York shops, restaurants and attractions.

Let’s say, like many nytimes.com users, you follow national politics closely. You could sit in on a weekly video conference phone call — open only to TimesPlus subscribers – during which top Times political reporters, columnists and editors would riff about latest developments and take questions.

There would also be similar exclusive-content conference calls covering subjects like foreign affairs, the arts, books, entertainment sports, food, science and health – anything that the Times staff is expert on.

Five times a year, TimesPlus subscribers could submit personalized requests – say, what are safe and interesting but not pricey neighborhoods in Brooklyn (or Los Angeles or Dallas/Fort Worth)? – that would be answered with up-to-date information contributed by Times staffers.

TimesPlus would be priced at $10 a month, or $100 a year if paid upfront. If 5 percent of nytimes.com’s 20 million unique visitors became subscribers, that would add $100 million revenue that would more than replace tshrinking print ad revenue.

The percentage of subscribers could be even higher if the Times could convince merchants, restaurants and entertainment venues in all the major U.S. markets to give special deals to TimesPlus members. For many subscribers, those deals would more than pay their TimesPlus fee – just like most holders of the Barnes & Noble Membership card save more than the $25 fee through their discounted book purchases

TimesPlus would have its own comment boards where subscribers could contribute their ratings, and cross swords with Times experts.

TimesPlus would also let subscribers build their own multi-media mini-sites and form groups among themselves. What a great place the site would be for subscribers to offer housing for pleasure or even business trips to New York and other cities, as well as vacations, or to sell art and other special and unique objects.

Subscriptions might start slowly – many people remember TimesSelect – but if the site lived up to even half of its potential, viral marketing would take over and in a couple of years subscribers could swell to several million or more. Imagine the revenue potential if that happened.

Purists might say what does all this – tips for tourists! — have to do with the mission of the New York Times. But the Times already produces reams of features that are tips about a 10,000 things less significant than how to reduce your carbon footprint. What would be different about TimesPlus intelligence is that it would marshal all the Times considerable but underused resources. The Times has a newsroom staff of about 1,300. TimesPlus would mobilize that talent much more efficiently than the space that editorial content gets in either the print or online paper.

As recently as 15 years ago, the only New York Times was its print edition. If you lived in Peoria, Ill., you might have to drive a couple of miles to find a place that sold it. The Internet put the Times in reach of anyone with a computer. The editors still made all the decisions about what would go online pages, but at least now there was feedback – sometimes blowback — from users. TimesPlus would break down even more barriers. It would create more and direct connections between Times staff and its readers, and, let readers form relationships among themselves in all kinds of social, professional and volunteer categories. Very likely, subscribers could become a critical mass of resource material for the Times as it uses the Internet to widen its net of information gathering.

As Times stock has descended in a near-straight line, the specter of bankruptcy has reared its head. Even reorganization would probably mean the end of revealing investigative stories we have seen during the current financial crisis, like this one that opened the door to the executive suites at Merrill Lynch as it was gorging itself on fees from flipping high-risk derivatives, or this one that did the same for Citbank.

TimesPlus could prevent that from happening. It would provide the bridge from the print to online paper that is desperately, and speedily, needed.