Last week, the New York Times reported that readership of the nation’s daily newspapers declined by 2.8% in the last six months, one of the sharpest declines in recent history.  The Times online readership is now bigger than the number who buy the print edition.  But it will take 20 years for online ad revenues to match ½ today’s ad revenues from print.  The newspaper industry could become a major casualty as online fails to fill the gap in revenues created by declining offline sales.

This week, Philips is sponsoring all Times Select content as part of its ongoing "Simplicity" campaign.   I plan to take advantage of the free access, but having never knowingly met anyone who is a subscriber of this service (I don’t think I’ve ever had a Times Select article emailed to me, either as a link or pasted text), I wonder how many converts this promotion will win over.

http://www.nytimes.com/marketing/freeaccessweek/

Daniel Modell