From MIN: 

Editor & Publisher’s Web site EditorandPublisher.com announced to readers on Friday that it would no longer restrict access to its content to paid subscribers. The venerable media-on-media trade brand was sold by Nielsen in January to Duncan McIntosh Company, which inherited the online subscription model. In a statement at the site, publisher Duncan McIntosh said, “Nielsen had been using [paid access] for a number of years, but nothing during the past year has changed our opinion about them.” McIntosh says that he and the staff had never been “big believers in pay walls." "We have removed it to build more traffic and make more of our original content available to our visitors," he says.

The brand, which started in 1901, continues to publish on a monthly basis. Print subscriptions are $65 a year.

I hope they are right. 

From Paid Content.org: "Forget about what you’ve heard—apparently readers are happy to pay for content. Or at least that’s what News Corp (NYSE: NWS). which plans to charge readers globally for access to News Corp websites, says its internal research has shown. According to a memo from Richard Freudenstein, CEO of News Digital Media, the online arm of News Corp.‘s Australian subsidiary News Limited, the company is confident about the success of the plan, which is entering a “second phase” in Australia.

In a memo leaked to the Sydney Morning Herald, he says: “News has conducted some audience research here in Australia and in the UK and U.S., which gives us confidence that, if we get the product and delivery system right, people will happily pay for news content online, on their computer, mobile, e-reader or other devices.”

The New York Times says it will decide this summer whether to offer online content through a subscription model, metered model or a pay as you go micro-payment model. Full story here.

One thing is clear, it is going to start costing money to read the New York Times online. Hopefully, more publications will follow and begin charging for the content that is so expensive to produce. As we have said before, the model, so pervasive among newspapers and magazines that traffic generates revenue, isn't working.