Cooking. N.Y. Times

[ElsieD]

I just got an email from them saying they have moved to a subscription model.  To access their database will cost $5 per month.  You can still access the recipes in their newsletter and  the new recipes published each week but that's about it. You can sign up for a free 28 day trial but then you will be prompted to take out a subscription.  Those who subscribe to the Ny Times can still access it free of charge.

Edited June 28, 2017 by ElsieD
Added the last line. (log)

[JoNorvelleWalker]

I have free access to the Times from my work but when I go to a recipe now I'm informed a subscription is required.  I shall have to ask about this.

[rotuts]

check on your work computer when at the NYT site if you are ' signed in '

[boudin noir]

I use the Times food site and find it to be very useful. Well worth getting the Times and for any cook looking for a vast library of recipes a great resource.

[Anna N]

 Not prepared to pay five dollars a month for access to a database of recipes.  

[kayb]

I'm a Times online subscriber. Have been for years. Will be until I can no longer afford $10 a month. Would happily pay an extra $5 a month for the Cooking site; grateful I don't have to.

 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

10 hours ago, rotuts said:

check on your work computer when at the NYT site if you are ' signed in '

 

Access doesn't have to be from my work computer, though if I'm not at work I do have to sign in.  I'm still getting a message that the recipes will be free only for the next four weeks.

 

As much as I've become a NY Times junkie I won't give the Times a red cent for something that is supposed to be free.  Not really free, of course -- we pay them a great sum of money for the privilege.  I'm told we are supposed to be entitled to all content.  Our tech support said we had to create a NY Times sign-in specifically for the recipes but that access to the recipes is free.

 

We also have free access to The Wall Street Journal and I must say technically The Wall Street Journal works much better, recipes or otherwise.  I've never been blocked from anything on The Wall Street Journal site.  The catch is I can only access The Wall Street Journal site at work, while access to the NY Times site works or doesn't work equally poorly both at home and work.

 

[Smithy]

@JoNorvelleWalker, I don't understand the assertion that you need a specific sign-in for the cooking site. If you have Times access via a subscription, you should have access to the news and the food without a special user name and password.

 

A few months ago I was terribly frustrated with the Times app on my tablet (or was it my cell phone?) and deleted it in a fit of pique, then gave it a horrid review in the Google Play Store.  Within hours a Times person had responded in public, asking me to contact them.  By the time it was all done they had reviewed my subscription and improved my access for all features from all devices, and I haven't had a lick of trouble since.  If you're having trouble with access, I recommend you contact them.

 

Like kayb, I'm already a subscriber, delighted to be so, and planning to continue as long as I can afford it.  Like Anna N, I'm not sure I would pay $60/year for the privilege of access to their cooking material alone. None of my print magazine subscriptions is so expensive. 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

1 hour ago, Smithy said:

@JoNorvelleWalker, I don't understand the assertion that you need a specific sign-in for the cooking site. If you have Times access via a subscription, you should have access to the news and the food without a special user name and password.

 

A few months ago I was terribly frustrated with the Times app on my tablet (or was it my cell phone?) and deleted it in a fit of pique, then gave it a horrid review in the Google Play Store.  Within hours a Times person had responded in public, asking me to contact them.  By the time it was all done they had reviewed my subscription and improved my access for all features from all devices, and I haven't had a lick of trouble since.  If you're having trouble with access, I recommend you contact them.

 

Like kayb, I'm already a subscriber, delighted to be so, and planning to continue as long as I can afford it.  Like Anna N, I'm not sure I would pay $60/year for the privilege of access to their cooking material alone. None of my print magazine subscriptions is so expensive. 

 

I'm sorry, I was not clear.  We don't have subscriptions for the NY Times site.  This is completely different.  We pay (a lot) for full access to the NY Times, for which we have to go through our own site.  I admit I do not fully understand the technology.

 

Something similar with the Wall Street Journal but in that case I believe access is restricted by IP address.  I cannot access The Wall Street Journal at home.  But there is no sign in for The Wall Street Journal at all and it works flawlessly.

 

We are obviously not Los Angeles but this article explains somewhat how NY Times access works:

http://gizmodo.com/la-library-cards-gets-you-free-digital-access-to-the-ne-1785318653

 

 

[rotuts]

yes , many libraries in the USofA have access to lots of data bases via their web sites and a sign in w your library card.

 

Ive been a subscriber to the NYTimes for a long while 

 

it used to be a gift from my parents.

 

when I first went to the Cooking section  the other day after this thread started , a pop-up then  well

 

pop-ed up and said

 

more or less

 

yes you are a subscriber and have access to the Cookling Site

 

so clearly the NYTime

 

trying to survive a difficult environment

 

has sectioned off the Cooking from the Main

 

Id say , log into the main site

 

somehow  if you can

 

and then select the Cooking sub-section  and see.

[kayb]

@rotuts has called it -- the NYT, like all other newspapers, is facing major financial pressures, and they're identifying any sources of revenue they can. I can see how one would be the cooking site, for people for whom that is the ONLY feature of the newspaper they access. I have no doubt that for some people, it's worth it; right now, for me, it might not be, as the work pace has picked up to the point I have less time, by several orders of magnitude, to cook anything beyond a quick meal to stave off starvation. 

 

The other side of that coin is that I probably WOULD go ahead a pay the extra subscription, simply to support what is one of the few reliable sources of news we have left in the nation these days. My background is in journalism (my career for the first 20 years of my working life, until I switched), and I feel pretty strongly about the need for a good, unbiased news outlet. There are damn few of them left.

 

After all, I did pay 30 or 40 bucks, a few years ago, for a hardback copy of The NYT's New Best Recipes. The cooking section is like a cookbook that keeps growing.

 

[Anna N]

As an ex journalism student and a writer I am a great supporter of the New York Times in principle.   One of my favourite treats at one time was to buy a copy of the New York Times and enjoy it on a Sunday with my coffee and it usually lasted me most of the day. I loved to read the book section.   But even then many years ago it was six dollars a copy here and I have no idea if it's still available and what the price may be.  But as the owner of hundreds of cookbooks both hard copy and electronic and access to thousands of cooking sites via the Internet, five dollars per month is just not value for my money. And I don't think the Times will be able to sustain it for very long. 

[Norm Matthews]

If the NYT recipes stop arriving in my mail box, I won't subscribe.  Lots of their recipes don't originate with their staff and I have an ample number of other sources.   Of late I have seen fewer recipes from them that interest me anyway.  

[JohnT]

I have been subscribing to the free NYT food mailing list for about four months. Over this period I have found the recipes pretty ordinary and not too interesting. I have only found one that made me want to try it, and it was a total flop. I have found the lead-up text to be uninteresting and written like an unprofessional blog. There are so many good free recipe sources on the net for people who need some inspiration in their cooking that having to pay to be able to access the NYT recipe data base is a bit laughable, IMHO. One of our main daily newspapers tried the same idea a couple of years back, which nearly resulted in the total demise of the excellent publication. In the end they just stopped the food section. I think a lot of the food sections of news sites are similar to buying a cooking book - you may get one or two great recipes in the book, but the remainder are not too interesting or just do not light that culinary spark in the reader.

[cakewalk]

I get weekend delivery of the Times, so I can read everything online for free. That said, the food section has been disappointing for a long time, and if I had to pay to read it I would pass. The only recipes I do like are from David Tanis. Everyone seems to go ga-ga over Melissa Clark, but I've never understood why. I can remember when I couldn't wait for the Wednesday paper so I could read the food section, I read almost everything and almost always found at least one recipe that I couldn't wait to try. I don't think it's just a matter of having learned a lot over the years, so nothing seems new or eye-catching any more. The Tanis recipes are usually very basic. I just find that he shows a respect for food, and for putting food together to make a dish, however simple, that I don't see in the rest of their writers. I'm usually more interested in baking than cooking, but nothing has caught my eye there for a long time. 

[Katie Meadow]

Cakewalk, I totally agree about the current incarnation of the Wednesday food section. Slowly over the last few years it seems to have gotten less interesting. I don't know if there are fewer recipes in each issue than there used to be or simply fewer that interest me. I'm with you about Melissa Clark; her recipes for some reason are usually not appealing to me and sometimes her techniques strike me as plain bizarre. Her dishes often seem like....well, concoctions. 

 

I have not lived in NY for 50 years, so I never read the restaurant reviews with the expectation of dining out, but I used to enjoy them a lot. I loved Pete Wells column "Cooking with Dexter" but his reviews, not so much. The featured pieces don't grab me; they are long on chatter and short on recipes. My friends and relatives in NY don't cook much, so maybe the Times has determined its readers don't really want lots of recipes. The weekly "Eat" page in the Sunday magazine sometimes has an appealing recipe and also text that is better written. I still find some good recipes on the Times website, but since we subscribe to the daily NYT I don't pay extra for access-- nor would I.

[dans]

I was waiting for this to happen when they moved everything to off the main web site.  I'm not about to pay $60 per year for access although getting access with a subscription to the paper is better. I wouldn't pay the price to access the Cook's Illustrated/ATK/Cook's Country sites since I have subscriptions to CI.  Having to pay on top of the subscription is just greedy.

[cakewalk]

On 6/29/2017 at 7:23 PM, Katie Meadow said:

... her recipes for some reason are usually not appealing to me and sometimes her techniques strike me as plain bizarre. Her dishes often seem like....well, concoctions. 

This has stayed in my mind, for some reason. I agree with it completely regarding Melissa Clark, but then started thinking about it in a more generalized way. Many of the recipes in the Food section (and elsewhere) seem to be exactly that -- concoctions. It's a perfect word here. I'm trying to understand what the difference is. What makes something a recipe, and not a concoction? What makes it cohere? I also feel that a lot of "recipe" writers are just taking a stab in the dark rather than thinking about the food they're putting together. So we get concoctions rather than recipes. It's a good description of my general dissatisfaction with the NY Times Food section's current incarnation. But what makes a recipe work? (And why isn't the NY Times producing stuff that works?)

[MelissaH]

On 6/30/2017 at 10:21 AM, dans said:

I was waiting for this to happen when they moved everything to off the main web site.  I'm not about to pay $60 per year for access although getting access with a subscription to the paper is better.

My thought exactly: you could see this coming from a mile away. But I have alarm bells clanging in my head because the language they use is all couched in terms of "for now". I'm waiting for the NYT to decide to make Cooking a premium section like the crosswords and games are, where an electronic subscription alone is not enough to gain you entry. If you have a paper subscription, you get full access to the electronic site. However, this isn't really an option for me because even though I'm in the same state, the only delivery option available to me is a mail subscription, which would mean that I would get my paper at least one day late. (Although I should probably see what the cost of the least expensive mail subscription is, and compare that to the cost of a digital subscription plus digital crosswords.)

 

Because I'm concerned about access, I'm going to spend time that I really don't have on the Cooking site today, making and saving PDFs of all the recipes I've marked, so I know I'll always have access to them on my own local computer.

[Smithy]

11 minutes ago, MelissaH said:

Because I'm concerned about access, I'm going to spend time that I really don't have on the Cooking site today, making and saving PDFs of all the recipes I've marked, so I know I'll always have access to them on my own local computer.

 

That's not a bad idea.  I've been using my Recipe Box on their web site to collect recipes from all over.  Maybe it's time to establish a backup.