Traditional journalism lore says to write the most important thing first because you might lose the rest of it. In the old days, bad teletype connections or a tiny newshole could limit what you could get out there to readers.

Now the New York Times is charging those who don't subscribe to its print edition real money a year to read a small part of its journalism, its eight nationally known and quoted columnists, and 14 metro columnists, including our former Journal colleague Dan Barry. Metered access to the archives, digital tools and some extra content are thrown in to prevent wags like me from parsing the cost by the word.

The cost is $7.95 a month or $49.95 a year. Of course I'm not buying in. It's a slippery slope: If it's successful, will the sports section be next, for an additional $7.95 a month or $49.95 a year? Business could probably bring in double that, since it's a must read for people in the money business. See where this could easily go?

In the world of Martin Nisenholtz, president of New York Times Digital, that's "the cost of roughly two and a half martinis." No wonder he thinks the cost is trifling. Does Nisenholtz, pictured at right, have $800 dinners after those martinis?

Last time I called around, we didn't have $20 martinis in Providence (admittedly, I haven't checked the strip clubs), but New England Gas is seeking a 13 percent rate increase and Narragansett Electric requesting a 12.4-percent electricity rate increase. $49.95 is the new cost of gas to get to work each week for some of my colleagues, and most everybody dashed some help to Katrina survivors. Family budgets aren't seeing income that parallels outgo.

If you're poor, forget it. You can read these thoughtful columns at the library.

In reality, I expect to see the columns "pirated" on the file-sharing applications that has the RIAA suing over music, passed around like contraband, or emailed around to small groups like jokes.

Will the Times sue sites that "liberated" Paul Krugman and put Bob Herbert online today?

At PaidContent, Staci D. Kramer reports that "NYTimes.com is not launching the TimesSelect affiliate program ...with the new service today. Martin Nisenholtz, SVP-Digital Operations, NYTCO, tells me the program is in the works and should be in place by the end of the year." The idea is that bloggers and news organizations who subscribe to TimesSelect can quote from it and get a cut when they readers subscribe to TimesSelect from their links.

Teasing and shilling for the Times doesn't have much appeal, but I'd expect some bloggers to apologize and suggest it's a way for readers who planned to subscribe anyway to TimesSelect to help the blogger pay the server bills. But, by not launching both at the same time, that opportunity has been blown.

It is cruelly ironic that these columnists who followed their ambitions to the newsroom at the top of the profession are now locked behind a pay wall in a free medium, cut off from willing readers. (Remember when news sites were on Prodigy and only paid Prodigy members knew they existed?)

If a deep-pocketed free news site (think Time or Newsweek) were to make Maureen Dowd an offer, would she take it?

Robin Sloane's and Matt Thompson's little Flash movie EPIC 2014 predicts a future in which Google and Amazon run the Web, and The New York Times has “become a print newsletter for the elite and the elderly.” (There is a sequel/alternate version, Epic 2015.)

If that's how it turns out, here's where it begins.

History:

Oct. 17, 2003
Online Journalism Review, Mark Glaser:

On August 4 (2003), LATimes.com walled off the online entertainment section, Calendarlive.com. Now people who don't subscribe to the paper will have to pay $4.95 a month, or $39.95 a year, to access Calendarlive. To entice readers, the Times is touting improved search and listings, and discount coupons.

May 10, 2005:
Online Journalism Review, Robert Niles:

The Los Angeles Times debuted its redesigned latimes.com this morning. The newspaper website also reopened free access to its CalendarLive entertainment site.

The Times had restricted access to CalendarLive to seven-day subscribers of the paper, as well as a handful of online-only subscribers. The move was designed to provide seven-day subscribers an additional premium, in an attempt to reduce "churn." [Full disclosure: I was on the staff of CalendarLive when Times management decided to restrict access.]

However, Times circulation continues to fall (as it does at most U.S. newspapers) and having CalendarLive behind a subscription wall sharply reduced the site's traffic.