Newyork Times will stop charging for subscription based access effective tuesday midnight. Well, I would say welcome to the Publishing 2.0 party. Congratulations! on taking the big step.

Not sure how much money they were making with their online subscription business, but one thing is sure - it was very annoying to follow a URL and arriving at New York Times site to find that the page is available to paid subscribers only. It was a teaser, a really annoying teaser. What was the point in bring web surfers to a landing page and to tell them - aha we got you - you know we got the page but it is locked behind the walled gardens. If you want it real bad subscribe to us. Did I ever subscribe? No. Was I inconvenienced? Yes. Don’t you feel the same way?

Well, starting from Wednesday, all content will be accessible without any subscription. As far as revenue impact is concerned there may be a dip initially, but in the long run the ad revenue generated from additional page views, happy visitors, stronger brand, wider reach will lead to more revenue and better public image. I love New York Times and would click the URL everytime knowing that I will get to see the page at the end of the click.

They should have done this long time back to establish New York Times as a stronger online brand, but as they say - better late than never.

Mark at Recovering Journalist has an interesting take on the subject. Scott Rosenberg of Wordyard chimes in with his perspective while Mark Evan also share his views.