Will you pay for The New York Times online?

When The New York Times starts charging for frequent access to its online content starting in 2011, will enough people pony up to make up for lost advertising revenue? Obviously, that’s the big question not only for the Times, but for the newspaper industry as a whole.

Once in place, you’ll be able to get a few articles (unannounced number yet) for free each month but will have to pay a flat fee to get more content after you hit that wall.

Times’ executives have not answered some key questions yet, including the price that the public is going to be asked to pay. Also unanswered is what is the overarching goal: to protect the print product (by creating a barrier to reading the content online, driving people to print) or to boost revenue for online (which is quite a gamble).

Those goals are fraught with peril and nowhere near guaranteed for success. I’m sure a lot of publishers are glad that a player as big as the Times is jumping first.

What do you think? Are you a frequent nytimes.com reader? Will you pay to keep that up in 2011?

15 comments January 20th, 2010