They’ve tried this road twice before, and each time they’ve not only had to drop the pay access, but their readership has declined in each instance.

Kristof and the other op-ed’s were behind the Times last paywall attempt - Times Select, and their readership dropped off a cliff.

Their current attempt to get subscriptions is to charge after 20 article reads a month (excluding latest news?).

They’re going to charge the folks who drive traffic to their site with blogs - which seems counterproductive. After all, the people blogging are the same people who are avid readers and are bringing news stories to the attention of others.