Good evening.

I laughed out loud when I saw this item:

New York Times Considers $5 Monthly Web-Access Fee

July 9 (Bloomberg) — New York Times Co. said in a survey of print subscribers that it’s considering a $5 monthly fee for access to its namesake newspaper’s Web site.

Times Co. also asked whether subscribers would be willing to pay a discounted fee of $2.50 a month for access to the site, in the poll confirmed today by Catherine Mathis, a company spokeswoman. nytimes.com, the most visited among newspapers’ sites, is currently free.

Times Co. is contemplating additional sources of revenue as marketers slow spending on the Internet. Ad sales at the publisher’s sites, also including about.com and boston.com, fell 8 percent and 3.5 percent in the first quarter and fourth quarter of 2008 respectively.

Hey NYT executives! Please start charging your customers on the web. In fact don’t stop at $5, that’s for pikers. Go the full monty and demand $20 a month…., and raise your news stand price too…., double it in fact. That’s the ticket.