NY Times Online: Pay Us

The New York Times announced that it will be moving "premium" online content to a subscription model. The new offering, called "TimesSelect", will cost $49.95 annually. It will also allow access to archives that now date back to the 80s, and will eventually date back even further. People who currently subscribe to the offline edition of the paper will have access as well.

The biggest issue that's been raised with this is that putting content behind this wall will discourage the spread of these articles online... because bloggers and others won't link to content that's not accessible to their users. Jupiter analyst David Card calls this new strategy a "risky - probably even "dumb" - strategy in the face of blog-mania and exploding online advertising growth." I tend to agree. What's more, there are issues outside of the blogosphere, such as availability of this content to search engines.

Related Reading:
Clickz article
NY Times story (requires registration - ha!)