TimesSelect, 2005 - 2007

The New York Post reports that the New York Times is abandoning TimesSelect, its subscription-based online service.

After much internal debate, Times executives - including publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. - made the decision to end the subscription-only TimesSelect service but have yet to make an official announcement, according to a source briefed on the matter.

[...]

While other online publications were abandoning subscriptions, the Times took the opposite approach in 2005 and began charging for access to well-known writers, including Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich and Thomas L. Friedman.

The decision, which also walled off access to archives and other content, was controversial almost from the start, with some of the paper's own columnists complaining that it limited their Web readership.

According to the Post, the subscriber base of TimesSelect had dropped recently from 224,000 to 221,000.