NUTS – AT 9:44 A.M. ET:  Some institutions never learn:

The New York Times announced Wednesday that it intended to charge frequent readers for access to its Web site, a step being debated across the industry that nearly every major newspaper has so far feared to take.

Starting in early 2011, visitors to NYTimes.com will get a certain number of articles free every month before being asked to pay a flat fee for unlimited access. Subscribers to the newspaper’s print edition will receive full access to the site.

But executives of The New York Times Company said they could not yet answer fundamental questions about the plan, like how much it would cost or what the limit would be on free reading. They stressed that the amount of free access could change with time, in response to economic conditions and reader demand.

COMMENT:  They tried something like this before, and it failed.  My own sense is that this will fail as well.  People will just use up their quota of free articles, then switch to another online newspaper.  The Times is no longer the newspaper of record.  They've ruined that image.  There are loads of other news sources.

This is slow-motion self-punishment.

January 20, 2010