That's what a little birdie told me. Of course, don't take my word for it; believe it if/when you see it. (My sense, in any event, is nothing is imminent but something under serious consideration.)

But the argument goes like this: Sure, New York Times Digital made a 23% profit last year, but its overall revenue of $88 million accounted for only 3% of the NYT Company's total $3.2 billion in revenue. So, as much as NYTD is a darling in the online sector, it's a zit on the ass of the parent corporation. Moreover, it's a zit that some senior management at the company are itching to pinch, still concerned as they are about online's 9 million readers canibalizing the print paper's 1 million daily readers.

In particular, NYT Co's president and CEO Russell Lewis, former SVP of circulation, apparently really doesn't see the point of giving away the paper's content for free when online readers contribute only $11 a year to the paper's overall revenue compared to $900 for print readers, according to this timely Wired piece.

But as I say let's not take my word for it. It may well be only idle speculation (or...not). Imagine, however, if this did happen (the Wired piece quotes teenage hacker Aaron Swartz, who coded the Times' link generator, with a fascinating thought: "A far more sensible position for the Times would be to charge for new news, not old news"); what profound impact do you suppose it would have on the web publishing industry if the #1 news site suddenly went from 1.5 million visits a day to 50,000? (WSJ.com, for all its "success" in signing up paid subscribers, is not profitable, let's not forget.)

At least in that case NYTimes.com would probably stop serving those annoying pop-under ads...

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