Paywalls for news: Good idea or not?

The New York Times is the largest local metropolitan newspaper in the United States and the third largest overall behind The Wall Street Journal and USA Today. The weekday circulation of the paper has fallen drastically in recent years to fewer than one million copies daily for the first time since the 1980s. Today, due to the many advancements in technology, the revenues of the hard copy newspapers have been declining. This is due to two major factors: people can access newspapers online for free, and advertisers can advertise online much easier and sometimes cheaper. Ad revenues have severely fallen across the newspaper industry as can be seen at the following website:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/A-look-at-newspaperindustry-apf-2524980193.html?x=0&.v=1

The New York Times(NYT) is considering to move to a subscription or pay-per-read method. We are not sure if this is a good/safe strategy for them though. In 2005, they attempted to do this. It lasted for two years and stopped because they lost many viewers. Now, there is a possibilty that this could happen again and they would be unsuccessful. However, I do not believe that the NYT will attempt this again without having information or knowledge that they will still have a large audience even if they moved to this new method. They must have done great research with surveys taken, for example, to see that enough people will now pay for news that was free before, allowing their profits not to fall. Of course they are going to lose viewers who will not be willing or capable of paying, but I beleieve that they have thoughtfully considered this and know that it would not affect their profits too heavily. (Yea I know I could be very wrong! Lol!)

When i was much younger, I always wondered how newspaper companies made money because they were sold for so cheap, until my mother told me that the advertisements really paid for them. So now that ad revenue is on a major decline, ads are not paying for hard copy newspapers as much, and it is more expensive for the newspaper companies to manufacture and sell hard copies, thus they are looking for other ways to decrease cost and increase revenues. Soon there may not be any hard copy newspapers and everything may be online. Maybe this is what the NYT is predicting,with how the newspaper industry looks right now, and trying to take the first initiative, hoping everyone else will follow the trend.

I also believe that many people will be loyal and subscribe to the NYT, if they do start charging again because many people trust the paper as a great source of accurate and intellectual news. People from all over the world read the newspaper to get information about the US and the rest of the world. I knew about the NYT when I was back in Trinidad before I came to the US, because my teachers would refer me to it, showing that it is known world-wide and appreciated as a good source.

It would be sad for people who cannot afford it though and this is the major disadvantage NYT and other companies who may want to do the same has to consider. Yes they are businesses and they need to make their profits somehow but denying poorer people access to this essential intellectual information may not be the best way. Maybe the tv news channels, like CNN and MSNBC, are going to have more viewers if these newspapers begin implementing this method?!