To no one's surprise, The New York Timesannounced today that it would charge for access to its website beginning in 2011, using a so-called metered plan.

Here's what we know: 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 get full access to the site for no extra charge.


Here's what we don't know: How much the plan will cost or how many articles users will be able to read before the fee kicks in.

Times execs said the amount of free access could change over time, based on the economy and reader demand.

Many newspapers have been reluctant to start charging for web access for fear of driving away readers. Now that the Times has taken this step, other papers may be more likely to follow.

There are two schools of thought on the issue of erecting so-called "paywalls" for news websites. One school says that web surfers are so used to getting free news that charging for it won't work.

The other school, to which I subscribe (read The Era of Free News Websites is Ending), says that newspapers simply have no choice. Their print advertising revenues have been decimated by the recession; classified ads have dried up with the advent of Craigslist; and online ad revenue just isn't enough to support most news outlets.

In other words, if newspapers are to continue to exist, the revenue has to come from somewhere.

No doubt some - Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington among them - will whine that "information wants to be free" and that trying to charge for news online is like trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube. "We can't use an analog map to try to find solutions for a digital world," Huffington said recently of attempts to charge for online news.

But if all news is free, who's going to pay the reporters who gather the news? Last time I checked, journalists need food, shelter and clothing like everyone else. And no one's yet convinced me that blogs, even the best of them, are going to be a viable substitute for major news outlets any time soon. (Indeed, many blogs remain all-too reliant on content from traditional news websites.)

Just look at the coverage of the Haitian earthquake. News orgs have sent hundreds of correspondents there to tell the story of the human tragedy taking place. You think that's cheap?

Information isn't free, and to pretend otherwise is to ignore basic economic realities.

As Times columnist David Carr put it:

"It is not the job of The New York Times or any other mainstream media company to give away its content until it can no longer afford to do so."

No, it's not.

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