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The New York Times announced Wednesday that it intended to charge frequent readers for access to its Web site, a step being debated across the industry that nearly every major newspaper has so far feared to take．
Starting in early 2011, visitors to NYTimes.com will get a certain number of articles free every month before being asked to pay a flat fee for unlimited access．Subscribers to the newspaper's print edition will receive full access to the site．
But executives of The New York Times Company said they could yet answer fundamental questions about the plan, like how much it would cost or what the limit would be on free reading．They stressed that the amount of free access could change with time, in response to economic conditions and reader demand．
Still, publishers fear that income from digital subscriptions would not compensate for the resulting loss of audience and advertising revenue．
NYTimes.com is by far the most popular newspaper site in the country, with more than 17 million readers a month in the United States, according to Nielsen Online, and analysts say it is easily the leader in advertising revenue as well．That may make it better positional than other general-interest papers to charge-and also gives The Times more to lose if the move backfires．
The Times Company has been studying the matter for almost a year, searching for common ground between pro-and anti-pay camps-a debate mirrored in dozens of media-watching blogs-and the system will not go into effect until January 2011．Executives said they were not bothered by the prospect of absorbing barbs for moving cautiously．
“There is no prize for getting it quick,”said Janet L．Robinson, the company's president and chief executive．“There's more of a prize for getting it right．”
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