You pay for that?

Lots of people are remarking the New York Times pay scheme for Dowd, et. al.

Heck, all this does is remind me that I wouldn't even go to the trouble of registering for thing, much less pay for it. They filtered me out years ago.

LAGuy Adds: Though I do find all the registration stuff for so many papers annoying, I have been happily receiving the gratis NYT online for years now. Being a leading website has only helped it continue in its capacity of the paper of record.

I've written about setting up a monetary firewall around their editorialists (of all people) in the past. Now that it's finally happening, it still seems like a horrendous mistake. Why would anyone pay when they can go elsewhere on the 'net and get opinions just as informed (and slightly less crazy) for free? It's as if the NYT is voluntarily bowing out of the national conversation.

However, perhaps the damage will be slight. They'll make a few bucks and everyone else will read other sites that copy and paste anything of interest.