The New York Times is launching a new app featuring just the paper's opinion pages for a reduced cost of $6 a month, giving users unlimited access to the NYTimes.com opinion section, Mashable reported.
The NYT Opinion option will be similar to the "NYT Now" app, which centers on breaking news and costs $7.99 a month. A full-access subscription is $11.25 every four weeks. Both apps are available for no additional charge to paying subscribers.
"We have always known that opinion is one of those franchises that people really love," Denise Warren, the paper's head of digital products and services, told the Guardian. "People are willing to pay for it.
"One of our earlier attempts at a paid tier was TimesSelect, and that was mostly our opinion content," Warren said. "In the early days of that, we had about 250,000 paid subscribers."
Among the first newspapers to implement a paywall, the Times began charging for online content in 2005, later allowing for a select amount of free articles per month in 2011 through a metered paywall.
The new apps are the paper's latest attempt to pull in new subscribers.
"There is no doubt this is a very complicated strategy," Warren told the Guardian. "This is not the easy path, but we think it's the right path. We want to make sure that people understand why they'd enjoy this app or that app."
The NYT Opinion app also features a second stream of articles in "Op-Talk," a curated selection of editorials from outside publications or older Times issues.
"I'm really proud of the Op-Talk stream," said John Geraci, the paper's director of new digital products, as quoted by the Guardian. "Op-Talk is our editors looking around the clock for the best commentary around the world, and then pulling it into one stream. It's really an enormous timesaver for people looking to find out what the news means."
The app is currently available on iOS.
See Now: OnePlus 6: How Different Will It Be From OnePlus 5?
