New York Times announces pay wall

The New York Times has announced that a year from now they will begin charging for access to their website. The new pay model won’t apply to the entire site, but instead offer a specific number of articles for free each month. Once that number is reached the reader must pay to continue. Subscribers to the print version of the paper will continue to receive free, unlimited access.

The homepage will also continue to be free, as will access to articles accessed via Google and other search engines. However, once readers are on the site and click another article they will start counting toward the monthly limit. There is no word yet on how many articles per month will be free or what the cost to read additional articles will be.

As long as the fee is not steep, I won’t mind paying. I already do to get the paper on my Kindle so I am used to it. I also get it free on my iPod Touch and BlackBerry, as do many others. No word on whether those apps will stay free.

Read [NYTimes]