The brass at the New York Times made a bold move yesterday. They announced that-starting in 2011-they will begin charging to read some of their online content using a type of pay-as-you-read metered monitoring process.

I felt good about this. I know lots of people probably don’t. I think it’s time that somebody takes a stand and attempts to differentiate the qualified journalistic online marketplace from the rest of the content created by iReporters, iWriters, and i-Just-Want-To-Get-My-Name-In-Print wanna-be’s. I know they tried this once before in 2007 with less than positive results. Readers simply sought other free media outlets. I just don’t understand this. If you are a loyal NYT newsstand reader and stop and pick up a copy at Hudson News- why wouldn’t you do the same if you retrieved the information online? Isn’t it comparable to handing Tony at the newsstand the $2 for the daily edition?

Wouldn’t you still pay that if you thought the New York Times would just disappear someday, entirely? It could. Oh, my gosh-I just had a horrible thought. Can you imagine how the Manhattan landscape would change without its iconic newsstands on the street corners? I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to see that day come.

After all, there are online businesses that charge fees for intellectual property on a regular basis. We have to pay for music. Why? Because enough industry artists like Metallica stood up and said, “No, this is my intellectual property and you are stealing it if you are not paying for it.”

In that regard, we pay for all other kinds of tangible things online without a second thought. Why is it that we have such a hard time now paying for the news we always used to purchase to read? It just was never an issue, no pun intended.

The point is, if you paid for it before in some manner like a Nirvana cd, a sweatshirt, or a copy of Rolling Stone in a store, why is it such a crime to have to pay for it online? People are still needed to produce and create these items. That means people need to be paid to do so. This is how America was supposed to work, correct? And doesn’t it occur to anyone that the majority of people who are now doing this for free are not the Maureen Dowds of the world?

I guess what it comes down to is, will readers pay for quality? Will you? I would like to know…