Gee's Blog World: Time Magazine now available exclusively on the iPad and dead trees

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Time Magazine now available exclusively on the iPad and dead trees

Filed under: News

More sad news from the world of journalism: looks like Time Magazine is experimenting with putting its web content behind a very odd type of paywall starting with the next issue. Instead of being able to pay for a subscription to read the full content of Time in their browsers, web visitors see the beginning of each article, and this:

"The following is an abridged version of an article that appears in the July 12, 2010 print and iPad editions of Time."

Wait, so ... what if I don't have an iPad, and I think print is dead? I guess Time just doesn't want money from people like that. Paywalls are bad enough, but turning the website into an ad for the iPad and dead-tree editions of the magazine is pretty extreme. Not every article in the magazine is cut short, but all the major ones appear to be. I really hope Time reverses course on this, and at least offers online subscriptions as part of their paywall.

Of course, whether it's smart to have a paywall at all is another issue altogether.