#comments

So there’s been a minor furor bubbling around the idea that the nytimes.com is going to drop their Times Select program. Howard sent me this piece from the Post. Apparently they aren’t above a little catiness and nyah nyah’ing. It’s a very lopsided piece quietly told you so’ing the Gray Lady.

I mean, take a look at the closing graf:

The number of Web-only subscribers who pay $7.95 a month or $49.95 a year fell to just over 221,000 in June, down from more than 224,000 in April.

Wow that sounds awful. They’re down a whopping, umm… 1%? June is the beginning of low traffic season for most of the internet, traffic in general for many sites is down more than 1% from preceding months. So that doesn’t sound bad at all. “just over 221,000″ vs “more than 224,000″ – you have to love that spin.

You know, I don’t really have much loyalty to the paper, I have my beefs from my time spent there, but this is just ridiculous spin. 221k users at the lower yearly rate above represents $11 million, that number only goes up as the percentage switches from yearly to monthly, representing near $21 million if it was all monthly payments.

That’s not bad money at all. I don’t know why they’re thinking about dropping Times Select, maybe it’s a good reason maybe it isn’t, maybe Times Select was a good idea maybe it wasn’t. Who knows. But the internet is about trying new things, seeing what works and having the good sense to bail when you see something isn’t.