David Black

“The New York Times will stop charging for access to parts of its Web site, effective at midnight tonight.”

Vivian Schiller, SVP and GM of NYTimes.com: “Think about this recipe—millions and millions of new documents, all seo’d, double-digit advertising growth… the revenue that would come from that over time” will more than replace the subscriptions reve

“TimesSelect is dead. It was a cynical act doomed from the start. With it goes any hope of charging for content online. Content is now and forever free.”

“The TimesSelect pay wall has officially been torn down. Does this mean newspapers should forget about paid content? Yes, if they want be part of the “conversation” and participate in the web’s link-based ecosystem and economy.”

“While the ‘content needs to be free’ crowd hails it as a victory, the fact is that TimesSelect was the right idea, badly executed. Simply put, the Times put the wrong content behind its $49.95 pay wall.”

“The big news for online content creators this week is of course the New York Times abandoning its foolish paywall”

“I think allowing bloggers and other sites to link freely to columnists and other writers at the Times will help increase the discussion around the issues the paper writes about, and that will benefit the Times in the long run”

“even though I made the calculation that the content was worth paying for… the Times made the calculation that it was harming their business overall by limiting their distribution on popular search engines.”

“Pinch Sulzberger’s attempt to put his prized columnists behind a subscription wall on the theory that they were so much better than free bloggers that people would pay for them–is finally so doomed it’s actually dead, dead, dead, as of midnight tomorrow

“News Corp Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch said on Tuesday that he was leaning toward making the online Wall Street Journal free, but had made no decision yet.”