The unbundling experiment: NYT Opinion creates another product on the shelf

themediabriefing reporting:
The New York Times' launch of its fourth new paid-for digital offering today – NYT Opinion – has been coming for a while.
CEO Mark Thompson announced at the FT Digital Media Conference in March the launch of NYT Premier and NYT Now and mentioned a cooking package and a paid opinion product would also be released in the coming weeks.
For some the NYT’s recent approach to its digital subscription offerings represents a clever slicing and dicing of NYT content, answering segmented audiences with segmented products. For others it represents the fact the publisher isn’t innovating as intelligently as it needs to and is finding as many ways to skin the same cat as possible.
NYT Opinion allows access to the “Grey Lady’s” opinion pages alone for $6 a month. That means the variety of digital subscriptions available to would-be readers is as follows:

• $6 /month for NYT Opinion
• $8 /month for NYT Top Stories including the NYT Now app
• $15 /month for NYTimes.com unlimited access + smartphone apps + NYT Now
• $20 /month for NYTimes.com unlimited access + tablet apps + NYT Now
• $35 /month for NYTimes.com unlimited access + smartphone and tablet apps + NYT Now
• $45 /month for NYTimes.com unlimited access + smartphone and tablet apps + NYT Now + behind-the-scenes look at NYT journalism
• http://www.themediabriefing.com/article/nyt-opinion-digital-product-app-innovation-technology-unbundling