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The relative value of blog content vs. actual news items may be quite low in the majority of posts, looking across the general quality / salience of NYT blog posts. Though some blogs like DealBook and Economix probably have high readership, I wonder if people will really be willing to pay for opinionated tidbits.

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I wonder, too. Some of the NYT's most unique content is on its blogs, though, and they're the only NYT feeds I subscribe to.

My guess is that if Nisenholtz does this, a lot of the branded blogs on nytimes.com, including both Freakonomics and Paul Krugman, will simply leave and set (back) up on their own

I think that's a pretty good guess.

> I wonder if people will really be willing to pay for opinionated tidbits

I guess it's supply and demand: people will be willing to pay of opinionated writing on the net when there is a shortage of free opinionated writing on the net. I.e. never :-)

They've tried it before.

"Times Select" was a paid feature for access to its opinion columnists (regular news was free), but it lasted just two years: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-new-york-times-to-close-t...

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