NYT NEEDS WEB MONEY TO PRINT NEWSPAPERS

BANZAI7 NEWS--The New York Times announced Wednesday that it intended to charge frequent readers for access to its Web site, a step being debated across the industry that nearly every major newspaper has so far feared to take.

Starting in early 2011, visitors to NYTimes.com will get a certain number of articles free every month before being asked to pay a flat fee for unlimited access. Subscribers to the newspaper’s print edition will receive full access to the site.

“This announcement allows us to begin the thought process that’s going to answer so many of the financial questions that we all care about,” Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the company chairman and publisher of the newspaper, said in an interview. “We can’t get this halfway right or three-quarters of the way right or even wrong. We have to get this really, really right or we will be really really wrong.”

WB7: Hows this for an idea.  We pay to read your content without the distraction of advertisements of any kind. Otherwise you pay us for content posted on your site and for for the burden of having to read the news with page pop-ups and distracting advertisements.