The NYT acknowledges reality

Looks like the NYT is going to start charging for its content. I'm sure a lot of people are going to criticize them for this, but count me out. If they do this right, I think it could actually work. What not to do:

• Don't charge the same price for print and digital versions. Record labels tried this, and people saw right through it.
• Don't charge for content no one wants (e.g. TimesSelect: sorry but I'm really not interested in paying to read the opinions of Maureen Dowd or David Brooks)
• Don't charge for wire-service type content
• Don't make it all or nothing the way the WSJ does

Some sort of micropyaments scheme would be fine with me though. I understand that good journalism is not cheap. Just maintaining a foreign bureau is massively expensive (but obviously vital), and I'm glad the Times has realized that the vicious cycle of cost cutting to save money, then losing readers because the quality of their product suffers is unsustainable: it's a race to the bottom. (I'm also glad that they haven't hitched their star to some harebrained scheme to extort money from Google.) If they are the only paper to go this route, it may not work, but if they can get some other major publications on board, we'll see what happens. Either way, it's a hard road ahead for them, and I hope it works.