Will you pay to read the New York Times on your iPad under its new subscription plans?
Or will you try to game the system, getting free access through Twitter, Facebook or Google?
[polldaddy poll=4736679]
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
36 responses to “Will You Pay To Read The New York Times? [Poll]”
I would pay for the tablet version alone and use the iPhone Wi-FI Hotspot feature to read on the go instead of paying the $35 option.
But it needs to have the FULL content of the website including FULL content of the Sunday magazine. The NYT should have priced it at $10/month and tried, at least initially, to make their money on volume.
This poll doen’t take into consideration that anyone who subscribes to the New York Times automatically gets unlimited free access to NYTimes.com through web or smartphone/tablet app. Even if you have the Sunday Only subscription, which I do because I sometimes like to read old school. You know, a real newspaper (which is what the New York Times is BTW).
I have a sibling that works for the Times, and was very involved in the rollout of the pay model. Unfortunately, I won’t be purchasing. It is unreasonable to charge more for a digital version than the print version.
No its too much of a liberal rag and thats coming from a liberal
$15 a month for an iPhone app is unreasonable.
I would rather take my money to an unbiased newspaper (read: not ultra liberal/conservative) which writes articles according to facts and not a political agenda. The NYT is the Fox News of print.
This survey needs a fourth option in my opinion: “No, but I would consider subscribing if the electronic delivery cost is made substantially lower.”
I can get it free and I don’t read it. It’s the NY Times… ugh!
The poll questions are not detailed enough. I dont mind paying at all its a great paper but being charged extra just because you use your iphone downstairs instead of your laptop is a bad pricing model. I would point out that NYT did ZERO consulting with subscribers.
Wall Street Journal is $99 a year and with my one password I can read it on my 3 computers my iPhone or my iPad. Same with thestreet.com. One payment as many devices as you want to use.
This is the equivalent of selling you a cd and then charging you extra if you want to load it into itunes and put on your iPod, your iPhone, your iPad and your home computers.
Since I don’t have an iPad, this is only theoretical. My expectation is that I would keep my daily subscription and compare it to the online. If the online edition is as satisfying as the print, I might be tempted to try it paperless. Well, not on Sunday. There’s simply no replacement for the multi-sensory experience of the Sunday NYT. At the most basic, you can’t soak in the tub with your iPad.
Why would I pay for US centric news when there are so many better options available o me?
Most likely the paywall will be region locked, so I wont be able to subscribe anyway.
Shouldn’t there be a 4th option: Don’t need to as I already have a NYT print subscription
If I did not get the paper version I would pay for a digital version, but I agree that pricing needs to be attractive, especially to entice people to become users. But this is difficult when so much of the digi-world believes at some level in the imyth of free istuff, free icontent, free imusic to use on their hundreds of dollars phones and pads, using hundreds of dollars idata plans.
exactly!!
I love reading The New York Times (and I live in the UK!!) but their online subscription packages are a rip-off. The New York Post is something like $3.99 a month… I’m not comparing the papers… just their attitude towards charging customers …
Perhaps I would pay if the newspaper tied up loose ends to their new system, but until then good-bye New York Times.
Hello local newspaper.