35 = Number of People Paying for Newsday.com. Yes, 35.

New York Observer:

Quote:

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After Three Months, Only 35 Subscriptions for Newsday's Web Site

By John Koblin
January 26, 2010 | 3:04 p.m

In late October, Newsday, the Long Island daily that the Dolans bought for $650 million, put its web site, newsday.com, behind a pay wall. The paper was one of the first non-business newspapers to take the plunge by putting up a pay wall, so in media circles it has been followed with interest. Could its fate be a sign of what others, including The New York Times, might expect?

So, three months later, how many people have signed up to pay $5 a week, or $260 a year, to get unfettered access to newsday.com?

The answer: 35 people. As in fewer than three dozen. As in a decent-sized elementary-school class.[Full Article]

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the times already made public it's plans to charge for the site. they'd offer a certain amount of free articles and then charge you for unlimited onthly usage. no word on the blackberry apps, hope they stay free. (even though they don't work all that well).

Unless every news agency is in cahoots to start charging for news, I don't see this whole charging for news being too successful, especially for a regional paper like Newsday. People will just turn to the other 50 news sources that offer the stories for free if they are really interested in them....

Keep in mind, if you have Cablevision, you get access to Newsday for free.

That's a lot of potential readers that don't have to pay the fee.

I read Newsday online pretty much every day. Not a huge fan of the newspaper and the websited is not one of the better ones out there but it's nice to have local news from Long Island.

I used to read Newsday from cover to cover but since "Newsday now owned by Cablevision" it has become more of a garbage paper. It doesn't give proper indepth coverage of its own local area or sports team ,(NYIsles). I dropped Cablevision ages ago as I had an issue with them. So there is no way Im going to spend $5 a month for garbage. There are plenty of free sites to get coverage.

Why would Cablevision-owned Newsday cover the Islanders when they can give you wall-to-wall coverage of the Cablevision-owned Rangers instead?

Coming soon to ComcastNBC: non-stop Flyers and Sixers highlights!

Anyone with Optimum Online get it for free, so that is FIOS and Dish users that have signed up.