Why the NYT should license content to app developers.

What if we could subscribe to The New York Times through popular iPad reading apps, like FlipBoard or Instapaper?

The New York Times iPad app is thoroughly disappointing — and even more so now that the paper charges a premium ($20/month) to access it. It contains no links, has little regard for readability and its interface is rigid and ill-conceived.

All too often, I find myself straying from the NYT app for better reading experiences on the iPad, which is a shame: For all the criticism we’ve heaped upon the paper since the introduction of its new paywall scheme, the breadth of its journalism is still largely unparalleled. 

So it got me thinking: why doesn’t the New York Times license its “raw” content — text, photos, videos, etc. — to other content wrappers (ie. popular iPad reading apps), much in the same way it currently works with Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes and Noble’s Nook?

What if I preferred reading the paper through an app like FlipBoard, whose attention to layout, readability and interactivity was more closely aligned with my own sensibilities? Or maybe I’m more keen on the bare-bones approach of Marco Ament’s excellent reading app, Instapaper?

This approach could create an interesting marketplace for news reading, with the papers themselves acting as de facto wire services to app developers more adept at creating engaging reading experiences. The Times could charge a more reasonable subscription fee — granting users the right to access its raw content through as many participating apps as they’d like — and app developers could charge for the apps they develop to encase that content. 

Win-win, right?

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