---
created_at: '2010-04-01T22:55:46.000Z'
title: The New York Times Introduces a Web Site (1996)
url: http://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/22/business/the-new-york-times-introduces-a-web-site.html
author: nishantmodak
points: 41
story_text: ''
comment_text: 
num_comments: 14
story_id: 
story_title: 
story_url: 
parent_id: 
created_at_i: 1270162546
_tags:
- story
- author_nishantmodak
- story_1235589
objectID: '1235589'
year: 1996

---
The Web-based Times is the newest of dozens of papers available to a
global audience on the Internet's fastest-growing service, which lets
computer users see electronic publications consisting of text, pictures
and, in some cases, video and sound.

A selection of the day's news, discussion forums and other material from
The Times has been available through the @times service since the spring
of 1994 on America Online.

The Web site's global audience means a larger potential readership than
that of @times, which is limited to America Online's subscribers,
currently more than four million. The new site also offers new products
and services.

"Our site is designed to take full advantage of the evolving
capabilities offered by the Internet," said Arthur Sulzberger Jr.,
publisher of The Times. "We see our role on the Web as being similar to
our traditional print role -- to act as a thoughtful, unbiased filter
and to provide our customers with information they need and can trust."

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The Web site will also offer access to much of what the newspaper has
published the previous week and access to feature articles from as far
back as 1980.

Mr. Nisenholtz said that initially, at least, no subscription or access
fee would be charged for readers in the United States and that the
electronic paper would generate revenue from advertising. Readers who
connect to the electronic paper from outside the country will be offered
a 30-day trial without charge, but will eventually face a subscription
fee.

Advertisers that have already announced participation on the Web site
include Toyota Motor Corporate Services, Chemical Bank and the Northeast
real estate concern Douglas Elliman.

Subscribers will have limited access to archives of Times articles and
features dating to 1980, and will be able to copy articles to their own
computers for $1.95 each, Mr. Nisenholtz said.

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The new service will also offer, for a fee, a customized clipping
service that delivers to a subscriber's electronic mailbox articles
gleaned from each day's editions of the newspaper, based on key words
the subscriber selects.

With its entry on the Web, The Times is hoping to become a primary
information provider in the computer age and to cut costs for newsprint,
delivery and labor. Companies that have established Web-based
information sites include television networks, computer companies,
on-line information services, magazines and even individuals creating
electronic newspapers of their own.

"The New York Times name will get people to look at the product once or
maybe twice, and the fact that The New York Times has the kind of reach
and credibility it does may persuade people to look three or four
times," said John F. Kelsey 3d, president of the Kelsey Group, a
consultancy running a conference on interactive newspapers next month.

"The market is booming for newspapers on the World Wide Web," Mr. Kelsey
said.

[Continue reading the main story](#whats-next)
