Senior Vice-President of Digital Operations at the New York Times, Martin Nisenholtz, held a question and answer session yesterday (found on PaidContent with audio feed and AdAge) concerning the NYT's decision to put a paywall up on some premium content come September (previous posting). Predictably, he received a lot of criticism, but he defended the move saying the Times needed a second revenue stream. Current USD 2.95 access to an archived article brings in over USD 1 million a year, a number which Nisenholtz hopes will increase significantly with the new subscription package, TimesSelect. The NYT's SVP did acknowledge the possibility that placing the papers' op-ed columnists behind the paywall could inhibit the online conversation of the blogosphere which frequently uses the op-ed staff as a starting point for discussion. But he said, "Feedback from columnists has been good--[they acknowledge] that we need to create an additional revenue stream."

Speaking of other experiments, Nisenholtz said NYT's RSS is growing and that homepage access to the site will drop to 60% as feeds become more popular. He also claimed that TimesSelect is the only pay model the Times is considering.

Sources: PaidContent, AdAge