Online paper wants you to pay for its opinion

THE NEW York Times thinks its opinions, and the views of its hacks, are so important that people will shell out cash to receive them.

From Monday, the New York Times will charge readers $49.95 a year to read its Op-Ed page which includes the collective wisdom of Thomas L. Friedman, Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich.

Dubbed TimesSelect will also include access to the Times' archives, early looks at some sections of the paper and online tools for tracking and storing articles from the Times Web site. You will still have to pay extra for the crossword.

In the past such cunning plans have been scuppered by bloggers who have posted articles on their sites.

A spokesTimes admitted that bloggers would have fun cutting and pasting the columns into their blogs to let people have them for free.

But they would soon get bored of this and the subscription system will start to make them money.

More here. µ