NYT.com to start charging

Starting in early 2011, online visitors will only have access to a certain number of free articles per month. After that, they'll be required to pay a flat fee for full access. Print subscribers won't have to pay. The NYT Co. has not released many specifics, such as how much the plan would cost or how much free access would be available. All that's really been announced is that there will be a pay model - and the move is certain to influence whether other newspapers start charging for online content as well . From the NYT:

"This announcement allows us to begin the thought process that's going to answer so many of the questions that we all care about," Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the company chairman and publisher of the newspaper, said in an interview. "We can't get this halfway."

[CUT]

Most readers who go to the Times site, as with other news sites, are incidental visitors, arriving no more than once in a while through searches and links, and many of them would be unaffected by the new system. A much smaller number of committed readers account for the bulk of the site visits and page views, and the essential question is how many of them will pay to continue that habit.