• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, August 7, 2007

The New York Times plans to scrap its two-year-old TimesSelect subscription service and once again make all of the newspaper's columns available for free online, according to a report in today's New York Post.

The move comes amid speculation that under Rupert Murdoch's ownership, The Wall Street Journal will stop charging for content in favor of an ad-supported business model.

The Journal has historically charged users a fee for online access, but it's one of the few newspapers that's been able to successfully sell paid subscriptions. The Times, on the other hand, built a large Web presence by making its content available for free -- until September of 2005, when it began charging readers for access to columnists including Frank Rich, Maureen Dowd and Nicholas D. Kristof.

Although the company boasts that almost a quarter of a million readers pay $49.95 a year for the service, it's been apparent for a while that some executives at the Times don't favor the initiative. Speaking at an industry summit in February, Nicholas Ascheim, the company's director of entertainment, video and audio products, said that younger users might never read the paper's columnists if they had to pay for them. "New generations will never get exposed," he said.