Of course, the 'gift' is just NYT's ploy to glom onto new subscribers and/or mine their IP addresses and such.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
The NYT and virtually every newspapers in this country is struggling for financial survival. The techniques they are using to garner new online subscribers is little different than previous marketing campaigns targeting paper and ink subscribers. I don't see the 10 free articles a month as any different than those who read the news above the fold of the paper on the newsstand without buying a paper. Neither do I see any difference in selling their email subscriber list to marketers and selling their home delivery lists to the same marketers?
If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?
