First, I have to disclose that I’m a Times Select subscriber despite having vowed never to sign up when they built that paid wall. But, heck, they gave me Times Select for free with my subscription to the weekend paper.

Why am I so against paid walls? The folks at Editors Weblog say it best by boiling the issue down into a simple metric.

Before the paid-wall came into effect, the day’s editorials were regularly listed as the most popular stories on the site, sometimes for days or the entire week. After TimesSelect launched it became extremely rare to find Maureen Dowd or Tom Friedman on the list . . .

Journalism matters only when people read it. Any business model that hinders market penetration should be a last resort. My guess is the Times folks see the paid model as a necessary evil. I just disagree.

The ads surrounding the copy make plenty of money already, and the articles could make more if allowed unlimited market penetration.

When a news commodity is as consistently popular as the Times columnists, don’t charge people more to read it, charge advertisers more. Let’s not forget the basics of newspapering. Don’t raise the price of the newspaper because more people are reading it. Raise the ad rates.