Campus gets free Times web exclusives

Campus fans of Maureen Dowd, David Brooks, Nicholas Kristof and other New York Times columnists now have free access to the columns and the other previously for-pay content from the paper's TimesSelect service.

The new policy, which went into effect on March 13, is available to any user whose email address ends in ".edu." The university membership is identical to that of a paid TimesSelect user, providing access to more than 20 oped and news columnists — including Dowd, Brooks and Wilson School professor Paul Krugman — as well access to the Times' online archives, special Select-only features and previews of the Times magazine.

The move to provide free content to university users stems from a desire "to encourage readership and open dialogue with our columnists," Times spokeswoman Diane McNulty said. "We're constantly evaluating the best ways to provide readers with our journalism."

Before TimesSelect was introduced in September 2005, columns were available for free on nytimes.com.

Other content has been created exclusively for TimesSelect since then. The service costs $7.95 for a monthly subscription and $49.95 for annual membership.

The New York Times will distribute prorated refunds to student subscribers who previously paid for a TimesSelect subscription, a Times statement said.

As of March 22, over 40,000 people had signed up for the free university edition, McNulty said.

Krugman said in an e-mail that "all the columnists are happy to have more people able to read what we write."

He added that because he does not assign any columns as required reading for his students, he has not personally observed the effects of the Times' move.

Columns and the Times archives continue to be available on several databases accessible from the University Library, including Lexis-Nexis and ProQuest.

Students stressed the convenience of the new university membership.

"I used to read the editorials, but then I didn't because they charged for it," Nelson Chiu '07 said. "If it was a particularly interesting one, I'd go on ProQuest and Lexis-Nexis."

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Joining TimesSelect through the free subscription offer "just made it a lot easier," he said.

Adrienne Clermont '09 said that TimesSelect's features "didn't seem worthwhile to pay for."

But since joining the service under the university offer a few weeks ago, she has found the subscription useful. "It's really nice to have because you can get back issues and read columnists," she said.

As newspapers around the country face declining subscription numbers and increasing costs, many, including the Times, have turned to their websites for sources of additional revenue.

"We do have to find ways to monetize our journalism," McNulty said. "It's very expensive to maintain and protect our bureau in Baghdad." That bureau costs the Times about $1.5 million a year to operate.