According to this snarkily written article:
NYT pundits lament pay-only Times Select
Editor & Publisher interviewed some of the New York Times columnists whose work is no longer accessible on the web without charge. They are not happy about the reduced readership, and note that in many overseas locations the $50 charge the Times imposes would pay for a lot more than on the Upper West Side.
For its part, the Times is still keeping the number of those paying a state secret. Which means it is an embarrassment, in all liklihood.
“I’m sad to lose an awful lot of readers, and a lot of readers in places like China and Pakistan who don’t have credit cards or the ability to sign up,” says Nicholas Kristof, a four-year Op-Ed columnist whose work appears twice weekly. “I want to be read, and this makes it much harder. But that is tempered by a concern that we come up with a business model to pay for my trips to Africa.”
The decline in earnings at the New York Times Company apparently weighs on the mind of Kristoff. And filing from Bayonne, New Jersey instead of Nairobi apparently doesn’t thrill him, either.
Thomas Friedman, another Op-Ed columnist who has a lot of foreign readership, admitted to being torn on the subject: “I want my newspaper to have a successful business platform. But the other side of me says that I have a lot of international readers in places like Egypt, where $50 could be their college tuition for a while.”Friedman stressed that reaching readers was among the most important aspects of the opinion pages, but added, “so is a good business model.” He credited the paper with trying something new, noting, “we had to dive into the pool to see what was there.”
more…
http://americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=3429