The Biz Blog

Arthur Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times, famously has said that when readers move online, so will the Times -- and find a profitable way to do so.

 

As events are playing out, it now appears there will be multiple versions of a digital Times. They exist already. Of the formats, the 18-month old Times Reader holds particular interest because of its ambition to reproduce the print experience in portable digital format -- and for a price.  It is promising enough that I think it merits mention in during our current celebration of Good News Week at The Biz Blog.

 

The product debuted with a flourish in a joint presentation by Sulzberger and Bill Gates at the American Society of Newspaper Editors convention in April 2006. As a business proposition, it pretty much vanished from view in the months since. 

 

The Reader was offered free for a time to an opinion-leader group. Now it is a paid product with a circulation of upward of 10,000 (it is also offered free to print subscribers).

 

Though Times Reader has been promoted heavily with blow-in cards and full-page house ads, Times management has not had much to say about results. "We have had consistent growth, though you always hope for more," Rob Samuels, senior project manager for digital said in a phone interview. "But we are committed to staying with it."

 

The product, developed in collaboration with Microsoft, runs best in the Windows Vista operating system, widely available since early 2007, and that has been an issue. Vista was slow in coming and hasn't taken the country by storm. Times Reader can be viewed on earlier Windows systems, though Samuels said that the installation is slower and less reliable. The Times also plans to have a version compatible with Macs by the end of the year.

 

We won't try to give a review or tour here, but the core of the system is a complex technology that displays stories sized to fit a full screen of any size in a font the reader chooses. It is searchable and printable.

 

I'm particularly interested in the price: $169 for a full year, Monday through Sunday. Getting the print New York Times every day now costs $665.60 a year in most parts of the country. NYTimes.com, of course, is entirely free, after the $50-a-year Times Select option folded last year (on the theory that more traffic and more ad revenue would more than make up for foregone subscription revenue). 

 

As you remember from Economics 101, average cost per unit and marginal cost are two different things. So it doesn't cost the Times all that much to serve one additional customer, nor does the company save $500 a year in production, paper and delivery if a subscriber switches. The pricing (subject to modification), Samuels said, is reflective of the economies of digital delivery together with a guess at the perceived value of the new product. 

 

A selling point is that Times Reader can be downloaded quickly, then viewed offline on a laptop or tablet device. Hence it is good for a commute (without requiring the intricate folding methods you observe on New York commuter trains and subways).

 

So, even hovering just above 1 percent of total daily paid circulation, Times Reader has some encouraging potential. There are doubtless hundreds of thousands like me who read both print and online but haven't gotten around to any extended sampling of this alternative.

 

Plus people pay for it. And it displays ads alongside articles -- the way readers and advertisers like in the familiar print newspaper.