The New York Times, one of Americas top notch news paper is finally ready to charge its online readers. New York Magazine reports today that after a long debate over its charging model NYT has decided to have a pay wall that will be very similar to Financial Times “in which readers can sample a certain number of free articles before being asked to subscribe“. New York Magazine also writes

New York Times Chairma

n Arthur Sulzberger Jr. appears close to announcing that the paper will begin charging for access to its website, according to people familiar with internal deliberations. After a year of sometimes fraught debate inside the paper, the choice for some time has been between a Wall Street Journal-type pay wall and the metered system adopted by the Financial Times, in which readers can sample a certain number of free articles before being asked to subscribe. The Times seems to have settled on the metered system.

This is kind of pay model has 2 strategic advantages -

1). Casual readers will still be able to read NYT with out paying any thing.

2). Loyal readers of NYT who are basically addicted to the new paper will have to pay a monthly or yearly subscription fee. So, Subscription charges are only targeted for users who might be more willing to pay for the same.

Now, the other news paper giant Wall Street Journal has a different pay model where in a part of their web site is free for all users while the remaining is subscription based. The traditional business model of print media is falling off its keens with revenues shrinking every quarter, so the desperation is quite obvious. Although I doubt that any of these pay models will really be successful like their physical world counterparts. But, I would say that odds are towards the NYT – Financial Times Model. It looks a lot more logical to charge only those readers who are regular to you website, but again how many will be willing to pay after getting used to free content for all this long? Very few!