As I've already covered on BloggingStocks, the New York Times (NYSE: NYT) has been considering getting rid of its premium online service, New York TimesSelect, for several weeks. According to an article in today's New York Post, the TimesSelect content has finally been "freed." The article goes on to state that the service will be discontinued once "software issues associated with making the switch to a free service" is resolved.

TimesSelect was a paid service that allowed readers to access the works of the most prominent and widely-followed New York Times columnists. Pricing for this product was less than $50 per year, but in today's blogging age the internet is loaded with free media and very few people were interested in paying up for newspaper content. As a result, the service's subscriber count fell to about 221,000 in June, down from 224,000 in April.

This move makes perfect sense. The age of paying for content on the internet is slowly losing its appeal to both publishers and readers. Publishers can reach a much wider audience and oftentimes monetize users at nearly the same rates with today's advertising solutions while readers are happy to receive the free information.