We’re about two weeks away from New York Times Co.’s drop-dead date, by which time either the Globe’s unions come up with $20 million, or the Globe drops dead. So this seems like an apt moment to review the results of my unscientific survey asking BMG readers if they would continue to subscribe to the NY Times should NYT shut down the Globe.
Amusingly, the most popular response was “Can’t help you – I’m not a NYT subscriber.” That one had 90 votes in our front-page poll, plus 14 in our SurveyMonkey for non-registered BMG readers, for a total of 104 out of all 159 respondents (65%).
Among those respondents who are NYT subscribers, we had 22 in the poll plus 19 in the survey, for a total of 41, saying that they would cancel in the event of a shutdown. We had 5 in the poll plus 9 in the survey saying they’d keep the paper coming, for a total of 14. So, by a vote of 41-14 (or 75% – 25%), BMG readers say they will cancel their NY Times subscription if the NYT shuts down the Globe.
I’ll leave both the poll and the survey up until we know what’s going to happen. If you haven’t voted yet, do so now!
I tend to think they wouldn’t, but I have the luxury of not being a newspaper union president.
Can we configure our browser settings so that we never, even accidentally, visit NYTimes.com, and thus never view their ads? Boycotting their website might be a more effective protest than boycotting the dead tree version.