The NY Times is squeezing money from every nook and cranny of its website. After shutting off permanent links several weeks ago (which has surely hurt their rate of incoming links), I just received an email from them. It reads in part:

Times News Tracker has been such a hit with loyal users like yourself that we’ve been working hard to build new enhancements to make keeping in touch with your world even easier. But providing this valuable service to our readers requires time and resources so we’ve made the hard decision to convert Times News Tracker to a subscription service.

So now if I want to have daily emails sent to me with keywords “Seattle”, “Nebraska” or “Portugal” I have to shell out $19.95/year. This, with absolutely no discounts for regular daily paper subscribers! Pbfft.

As this nation’s newspaper of record, the NYT’s significance on the web is diminishing as they continue to put up more fee boundaries around their content.

In response to my email stating that I would never pay for online services when I’m already shelling out $30+/month for the printed paper, the NYT writes back:

NYTimes.com is part of a different division than The Times newspaper, and each division manages its own products and is responsible for its own revenue. At this time we are not able to offer combined print and online discounts, but will continue to explore these types of offers. News Tracker is a valuable service that requires staffing time and resources. After significant research and user polling, we decided to enhance the service and charge for it.

Oh, a part of a different division, so obviously the services and fees simply cannot be integrated for the same content. Pbfft. They obviously haven’t studied the user experience here.. why would someone pay for the same content twice? The web site, as a mostly free service, should compliment the printed paper, promote the brand (unbiased, authoratative, accurate (minus Jayson Blair), comprehensive, trusted), and not try to be a money-making entity itself. I came to the printed paper through the online edition as it was just getting off the ground. Others, too, buy the printed paper after clicking on links sent through email and referenced on web sites. The incentives to link to NYT content are dwindling since the links will be broken (or rather, require a fee three times the cost of a daily paper) just days after being published. As Dave Winer observes, they’re losing web market share while they figure all of this out.