By Nina Mandell
DNAinfo Producer/Reporter
MANHATTAN — The days of free news for New York Times readers may be over.
Times Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. appears close to announcing that the paper will begin charging for access to its Web site, New York magazine reported.
The Times has considered three types of pay strategies, New York said. One option was a more traditional pay wall similiar to the Wall Street Journal, in which some parts of the site are free and some subscription-only. Another option was the metered system. The third choice, modeled after NPR would be a paid membership model which would encourage readers to donate and become members.
The debate to charge for the Times has been ongoing, but has heated up in the past year with Executive Editor Bill Keller and Managing Editor Jill Abramson in favor of a pay wall.
Times digital chief Martin Nisenholtz and former Deputy Managing Editor Jon Landman, who was until recently in charge of nytimes.com, have advocated for keeping a free site, the report said.
Readers will have to continue to wait for an official announcement.
There is speculation that the decision will be announced at the same time as a content partnership for the new Apple tablet computer, which is expected to launch on Jan. 27, The Guardian reported.
Painful declines in advertising have sparked many newspapers to consider putting up pay walls in the past year. Most recently, New York newspaper Newsday put up a pay wall on all of its content, making it available to subscribers only.
In the constant struggle to save the newspaper industry, pay walls seem to be a profitable way to start.
The Financial Times, which was considered a revolutionary newspaper when it put up a pay wall in 2002, saw revenues from digital subscribers rise by more than 30 percent last year, the New York Times reported last August.
