New York Times Select

The New York Times has changed its policy for online articles. Not all of its articles are available for free now. Notably, Krugman and Friedman, two of its most popular columnists are no longer free. The New York Times probably imagines that people will pay to read them; the new "Select" package for $8/month (cheaper if you buy it by the year) includes them, and others.

Some disagree that people will pay this fee just for them. They may be right. I'm certainly not a big enough fan just to pay to read the columnists.

But, I'm still contemplating this package. The largest benefit I see isn't discussed much in the news: you get 100 free NYT articles from the archive per month. This'll be great for me when I'm following links (whether my old ones or someone else's) to articles which are no longer publicly available.