Paying for nytimes.com

A day after the Chapter 11 filing of my local newspaper, Nicholas Carr analyzes the New York Times' plans to install a "metered access" payment system for their online content. I think his analysis is dead on.

The most interesting difference between this plan, and the Times' earlier attempt with TimesSelect, is the understanding that the nytimes.com site has to be open to incoming links. By pulling users in from search and social media sites, and saving the conversion attempt for the next click, the Times has a chance to generate revenue from a much larger community of users.