The problem is that this the same dead-tree business model moved to the web. It might appeal to people who consume their information in the classical morning newspaper way but I suspect that is a dwindling market.
People laughed at me then, they laughed at me when I said it again around 2000, and they'll laugh at me now.... but that still doesn't change the fact that it needs to happen, and eventually will.
It could be that the coming wave of tablet/e-reader platforms will be the last piece of the syndication puzzle. It's a safe guess that the New York Times will have someone at the Apple event next week, pitching a subscription deal. If they offer me access to several other major metro papers/special-interest broadsheets along with that NYT subscription, they've got a deal.
Paying $50 for TimesSelect to read the OpEd writers and a few other articles was way too much for me.
I'm an American living in Europe, and the NYTimes is the best place for me to get my American news "fix". The core reporting is what I really value and am happy to pay for.
I think charging or not for their services is definitely the NYTimes's prerogative. That doesn't mean that it's a good choice. Personally, I think it's a bad choice, because they're going to alienate some of their most loyal readers. I, too, wish that the neswpapers could find a sustainable way to remain profitable, but I don't think this is it. But if there is no sustainable way, I guess that means that newspapers actually aren't as valuable to us as we like to think, because otherwise we'd be willing to pay for it.
They're not trying to force anybody to support them. They're changing their business model in order to allow their customers to support them.
Nobody is forcing you to read NYT, if you don't want to pay, don't read it.
(I probably won't be paying, and I disagree with this, but it is their company to do with what they please)
It astonishes me when people think this should be free. KNowledge should be free, yes, but news that costs money and much, much time to acquire and then disseminate _does_ cost money and I'm glad to pay for it.
This is high quality journalism from hard working people: asking them to do it for less and less is ridiculous. Content is tangible, to me at least, and worth money, just as a few lines of code "anybody" could write is also worth quite a bit.