Robinson is likely to take on most or all of Nisenholtz’s direct reports, including the well-regarded research and development group led by Michael Zimbalist and struggling About.com. It’s as much a statement about the NYT‘s structure as it is about the role of digital in the company.

When Nisenholtz joined as president of The New York Times Electronic Media Company in 1995, the web was nascent and the digital media as we know it now barely existed despite numerous pioneering efforts. Nisenholtz wasn’t the first to push the Times towards a digital future nor was he alone but he was the one given the mission and eventually the resources to make it succeed. Today, no matter how slow the progress has felt at times — or to many in the newsroom, how fast — the NYT has an integrated newsroom with an understanding that digital, while it may not always be first, is equal.

On a larger scale, digital now accounts for more than one-fourth of the company’s advertising revenue; 28.6 percent in Q311. Nisenholtz’s departure, announced via the staff memo and in the NYT‘s Decoder blog, comes during the first year of what appears to be a successful launch for the NYTimes.com metered paywall.

Meanwhile, another part of his strategy — once-thriving About.com — has been experiencing considerable difficulty, while the company has been divesting some digital investments.

The news of his decision to retire quickly drew comments about his influence on digital media. Om Malik thanked Nisenholtz for being “generous with his time and advice” to him as a “young media-industry entrepreneur.”

Dave Winer, the “father” of RSS, credits Nisenholtz for the spread of RSS 2.0 for news delivery:

It was his decision, to license the flow of NYT stories to UserLand Software, in March 2002, that made it possible for us to provide their huge story flow to users of our product.

We also decided to make this flow available to our competitors, most of whom didn’t exist yet. That was when the arguing stopped in the tech world, and we all got busy developing software. And the publishing world had a leader to follow, and that’s what they did. This was made possible by an act of faith by an exec at the Times. That person was Martin.

Nisenholtz’s acceptance of RSS from the content side showed the kind of open mind and willingness to experiment that led to a variety of forward-thinking digital moves by the Times, including the Times Reader, early Kindle subscriptions, the embrace of Twitter and the freemium app strategy.

(I wrote about those early days of RSS OJR in 2004.)

That embrace always was coupled with an understanding that the company, led by its flagship paper, needed to make money from digital, and that eventually it would rely on it. Nisenholtz tried numerous variations on the subscription theme including TimesSelect, the ambitious, flawed effort to put columnists behind a paywall. TimesSelect lasted for two years, bringing in $10 million in subscription revenue but hampering the site from growing traffic.

The acquisition of About and the application of its SEO knowledge to NYTimes.com plus the expansion in internet access and interest showed that more money could be made from growing the site than from the subscription revenue. Eventually the Times found a different solution to its quandary, launching a new digital subscription earlier this year that requires payment to access more than 20 pieces of content a month while leaving the site open for access from social media links.

——————————————————–
Memo from NYT Chairman Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. and CEO Janet Robinson:

To Our Colleagues,

When Martin Nisenholtz joined The New York Times Company in 1995, we had zero Web page views. Indeed, we had zero Web users. Further, we had no Web revenue. Today, thanks in large measure to Martin’s vision and leadership, our digital numbers are dramatically different.

We note this and are writing to you because Martin has informed us that he plans to retire at the end of the year, after 16 years of service to The Company.

He leaves a lasting legacy that will be felt for a very long time. He developed a strong roster of executives and a deep bench of managers who are recognized leaders in our industry. Together, they will continue to execute on our digital strategy with teams comprised of the best and brightest experts on the Web, social media, design, digital devices, engineers and research and development.

Over the coming weeks, Martin will be meeting with his direct reports to ensure a smooth and seamless transition of his responsibilities.

While Martin will remain with us and engaged through the end of this year, we want to take this moment to thank him for his many years of service and dedication. Please join us in wishing Martin and his family a very healthy and happy future-in print, online and across multiple devices.

Sincerely,

Arthur + Janet

The exchange followed Nisenholtz explaining about the effects of Google search changes that were “more extreme than anything I’ve seen in the past” while being careful to avoid going negative.

Edward Atorino, Benchmark: “I wouldn’t think Google is out to help anybody, Martin. They’re out to get everybody.”

Robinson: “It’s our job to make sure our content is of the quality we want it to be and we’ve always wanted it to be.”

Nisenholtz: “It’s not about Google, it’s about the quality of our content.”

Atorino: “I thought you were looking for help from Google.”

Nisenhholtz: “I’m not naive about Google.”

Nisenholtz would not discuss the specific “internal issues” about why the company felt Irvine needed to be let go. (Irvine declined to comment for this article.) The basic argument against Irvine was that she was not a “product-oriented” executive and that she was not creative enough in terms of finding ways to build up the guide sites as individual destinations — though several observers said Irvine’s creativity was constrained by financial pressures. Either way, with the declines extending into Q2 and probably into Q3, ultimately, the NYTCo felt they needed to react, given the importance of the About brand — comScore (NSDQ: SCOR) Media Metrix says About.com reached 42 million uniques visitors in the United States and 75.6 million uniques visitors worldwide in December 2010 — and its position as a prime source of revenue.

“We’ve said that we’re not opening a CEO search at this time,” says Nisenholtz, who also helmed About with McCoy in between the time Scott Meyer suddenly left as CEO in February 2008 and Irvine took on the job that July. “I’m very excited to be back involved in the day-to-day running of About. You have to remember that About has reported to me since we acquired the company in March 2005.”

About’s decline started in Q4. Before that, About, which in addition to its main guide site About.com, also includes ConsumerSearch and Calorie-Count, posted a 12.4 percent revenue gain for 2010 — itself, a turnaround from 2009. The decline in Q4 was only 3 percent. But About’s revenues dropped 10.2 percent to $31.1 million in Q1 — and Q2 has been trending similarly, executives have said.

Too much reliance on search: One of the chief causes of About’s recent stumble is the change in Google’s search algorithm. About largely has been able to avoid being pegged as a “content farm” thanks to the fact that its guides are considered experts in their field and are not simply crafting posts around popular keyword searches. That said, when About was coping with the loss of display advertising, it began to rely more on cost-per-click ads and the search traffic that brought users to them. In hindsight, there may have been too much reliance on CPC ads, as according to the NYTCo’s annual report (pdf), these ads represented 57 percent of the unit’s total revenues.

Doubling down on guides: Nisenholtz feels that too much has been made of the change in Google’s algorithm as the cause of About’s troubles.

“Look, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is not in the business of distributing websites,” Nisenholtz says. “Google is in the business of giving great search results to users’ queries. Our job is to make sure our content is as good as it can possibly be. That’s the point. That’s what I mean by doubling down on the core — making sure we have the best quality content and guides. We are going to double down on the guides and the guide sites. As we do that, I suspect we’re going to see a positive change in terms of our volume metrics. In some ways, we’ve gotten away from that the last couple of years. Now, we have to get back to it. “

Guide sites as destinations: While About’s business is still relatively healthy, the 10.2 percent decline was like being hit in the head with a two-by-four and executives felt they needed to make a change fast. Irvine was regarded as a strong manager and administrator who was able to keep a large number of staffers together, including many who had been at the company for the better part of a decade — though there have been some key departures, including Marjorie Martin, the former GM of About Health who left for *AOL* and is now headed to Canyon Ranch; Dae Mellencamp, formerly SVP, product management and now a GM at Vimeo; and Sheryl Goldstein, former ad sales head and now chief revenue officer at a company called House Party.

Prior to About, Irvine was chief administrative officer at Publicis Groupe interactive shop, Digitas, and had held GM posts at Hearst New Media & Technology and New York Sidewalk. As such, she was given fairly high marks by a number of observers for initiating several branding campaigns designed to build up display advertising among media buyers.

In the weeks before being pushed out, Irvine unveiled a plan to add 200 more guides to the current 800 About contracts with. Plus, the company had just introduced a Spanish version to reach that growing segment. But to NYTCo executives, that was too little, too late and didn’t address the main problem — the sense that About had drifted from putting more emphasis on the guides.

Building franchises: The guide sites are like franchisees in a restaurant chain. They’re given the basic infrastructure and the general parameters of the business, but otherwise, the corporation puts them in charge of their own output and promotions. For the most part, About and its guide sites are not destinations. As Irvine told me last year, roughly 80 percent of About’s traffic come from search. There was a desire to see the About guides become the top two or three in their respective category but that has proved to be a struggle, since the guides are largely independent.

The company tried to build some buzz for its sites by bringing in celebrities as “expert guides,” such as chef Wolfgang Puck, county singer Faith Hill, NBA point guard Nate Robinson, and actress Marlee Matlin. But those were a small part of the traffic and those celebs didn’t really commit to their sites. Plus, it was seen as diffusing About’s mission of having singular guides providing regular posts. For example, About has an “American Food Guide,” John Mitzewich, who’s been with About since 2007, so bringing in a famous chef may dilute his value to a degree.

Instead, what About observers feel the company should have been doing was trying to make Mitzewich and his counterparts in other categories more well known. Or, at the very least, getting the guides to associate themselves more as representatives of About through their Twitter feeds and other social media outlets.

The payback: While some have faulted Irvine for not being inventive enough or focused on building new products, others say that she may have been constrained from putting the necessary investments back in the business because, despite its healthy margins last year, the NYTCo needed that revenue for other things.

For example, in October, Bloomberg reported that the NYTCo was in a position to pay back the $250 million loan from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim by 2012 — three full years ahead of schedule. There is a perception that the the NYTCo needed every available penny to pay down that debt more quickly, and therefore Irvine was limited in her ability to be creative in addressing About’s growth.

Nisenholtz emphatically denies this — and About insiders were at great pains to say that the NYTCo has been very supportive of the company even during the recession. “There’s no relationship between paying down the loan and investing in the business,” Nisenholtz says. “Just take a look at our balance sheet. Our investment in About has by no means been modest. Over the years, we’ve expanded it to China, we’ve bought three companies and built a sales and marketing department from scratch.”

In addition, Nisenholtz mentions the recent support for the 200 guides and the creation of the new Spanish site as evidence that the company has heavily backed About. He declined to venture any thoughts about how soon a turnaround might occur, saying only “It’s too early to say when we’re going to turn it around, but we’re going to try to do it as soon as possible.”

McCoy returns: The general consensus at About is that this isn’t a troubled property. For one thing, the declines starting in Q4 are being compared to the burst of activity that occurred when the advertising spending snapped back. The feeling is that it just needs some minor tweaks and the double digit revenue gains it had enjoyed last year will materialize again. The company isn’t expected to do any other dismissals or layoffs, at least not anytime soon. Neither is it expected to start getting heavily into mobile — thought its ConsumerSearch property just introduced a new mobile wap site — which is still not a major ad revenue producer for most media companies.

The main idea really is as simple as returning About to its roots, and as such, Nisenholtz is placing a lot of the turnaround on McCoy, who first started with About in 1998, when it was owned by Primedia (NYSE: PRM). Before that, McCoy was CTO for Cox Interactive Media following a stint in the early 1990s at the company’s Atlanta Journal and Constitution. He has been credited as one of the people behind About’s technology — and though the Google algorithm issue is not the only reason for About’s predicament, the sense is that he’s the best person to help resolve that.

“Ron is a superb technologist, a good friend of mine and someone who I’ve worked really well with in the past,” Nisenholtz says. “He’s also a very good business person and he understands this company extremely well.”

In a staff memo, Nisenholtz said that he would be retaining his current corporate position as he extends his role to the About Group, which includes the main guide site About.com, ConsumerSearch and Calorie-Count. The company sold About’s UCompareHealthCare.com unit to MDxMedical in Februrary.

After a no-frills thank you to Irvine, Nisenholtz wrote: “My goal is to build on this incredible About franchise, leveraging the hundreds of passionate, independent guides and the collective intellect of the many talented employees within the business unit.”

Revenues stumble: The executive change comes amid three consecutive quarterly revenue declines at About, which was partially attributed to changes in Google’s search algorithm. The company’s traffic is heavily dependent on search, though display had been trending down as well.

Despite the recent stumbles, About had a pretty strong year in 2010, with revenues rising 12.4 percent at the unit. But despite the continuing ad recovery, Q4 saw a mild decline in revenues of around 3 percent. Things grew worse in Q1, as About revenues dropped 10.2 percent to $31.1 million. That trend is expected to continue into Q2.

The turnaround plan: A day before the NYTCO’s Q1 earnings report last month, I met with Irvine to discuss her plans for addressing the declines. “We’re making a significant expansion in our content and doubling down on video,” Irvine said at the time. Specifically, she said the over the course of the year, About would be adding 200 more guide sites for a total of 1,000. It’s also introducing a Spanish-language version to appeal to that growing demographic and the advertisers who want to reach them. In terms of video, About had been planning on doing more video and with special promotions on YouTube (NSDQ: GOOG).

Irvine’s approach: About had seen dark times before, particularly in 2009. Irvine stepped into the job at About in July 2008, roughly two months before the global financial meltdown halted the growth of online advertising.

She had been the chief administrative officer of interactive shop Digitas before she was selected to succeed Scott Meyer (currently CEO or Evidon) as About’s CEO. Meyer had stepped down in February of that year; Nisenholtz had taken the CEO reins in the interim.

As the economy and ad spending tanked, About sought to balance display with cost-per-click ads. In an interview with paidContent in August ’09, Irvine described her approach. “We have done some things to enhance the CPC offering. We have optimized some pages by adding an extra link or two for CPC advertising, for example. But those changes have mainly been around the edges, as opposed to a wholesale strategic shift. Think of it as tweaking, with an eye toward what is going to work best in the current environment.”

The latest turnaround: By focusing on the Hispanic audience, Irvine said she saw a way to build on a small segment of About’s audience. “Today, there are about 30 million U.S. Hispanics and we currently serve about 3.5 percent of them, mostly women,” Irvine said. “With the tremendous growth of that group over the next few years, it made sense to focus a lot more on building a relationship there. The good news is that we serve enough of that audience to observe them and see what they want. The goal is that by offering a dedicated site for them within the About umbrella, it would establish a foundation for continual growth over the years. You can’t just look quarter to quarter.”

“That number” became part of the public conversation about the paper’s new metered paywall when it was published in the pages of the New York Times.

When the company finally launched the metered system in March, its flagship paper ran a detailed report from Jeremy Peters about the strategy. Included in that was a carefully worded reference to subscription goals: “The Times will not say publicly how many online subscribers it hopes to get. But company executives have said privately that the goal for the first year is 300,000.”

The number quickly took hold.

Nisenholtz, who was interviewed for Peters’ article, of course, knows that number was in the piece and was referring in the BBC interview to not knowing the source for it from the beginning. And, no, to be very clear, he didn’t call out his own paper on the BBC.

Unlike another number that became part of the public discussion — the $40 million price tag that Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. refuted openly and strongly at Columbia University — no one else that I know of pushed back at the 300,000 goal report. Then again, an internal goal doesn’t have quite the reverb as reports that you’ve overspent on putting in a paywall.

I’ve used it not only because of the way it came out but because of the response during my own reporting since then. Nisenholtz, though, is not one of the people I’ve spoke with about that figure.

The PR reply to my query on the BBC interview: “We’re not commenting on our internal numbers.” Peters is out of the office; his voicemail says he will not respond to calls until next week. (I didn’t leave a message.)

So what does it mean? Among other things, it means that there is no real way to gauge the more than 100,000 subscribers the NYT said it got in the first three weeks of the paywall in the context of a goal. We don’t know if the company is one third of the way there for the first year, one half, etc. Nisenholtz’s other comments to the BBC echo last month’s earnings call: the response is running ahead of plan.

Whatever the plan may be.

The interview starts about two thirds of the way into The Media Show.

Much of the reaction could have been written before the Times announced anything — and much of it was to some extent. Most of those who were against charging remained that way; many who favor some form of pay for digital access prefer other methods. There were the folks prepared to pay or willing to consider it but puzzled by the reality. Then there’s the family member (who still doesn’t quite get what I do for a living) who declared over Chinese food the other night that the NYT‘s subscription plan is “obnoxious.” He repeated it a few times. Why? Because everybody knows the Times makes scads of profit overall and especially with all the ads on the website so charging for access is “obnoxious.”

Some of the perception stems from the sheer length of time it took between announcement and reality. What to NYTCo digital head Martin Nisenholtz is “not particularly lengthy” when you think about all the infrastructure that had to be built or rebuilt was 14 months of cement to people who heard “meter” and thought “wall.” Never mind that from early on, top NYT execs insisted flexibility would be baked in and social links would survive. They also said they weren’t shutting off search access. (More on that below.)

Part stems from confusion. “Paywall equals no access” is much easier to grasp than “paywall has lots of windows and a doggie door.” Paywall also equals kneejerk reaction, as in “OMG, they’re building a solid wall that will keep everyone who really wants to go in from doing so.” That’s one reason some are insisting now that the NYT doesn’t have a paywall. Well, yes it does – one that kicks in every month after a meter clicks off 20 article views. But using the term on the front end causes problems.

Also from confusion over the way it’s supposed to work. I’m not going to call people out but I’ve seen some of the most sophisticated news-oriented people I know get this wrong-telling people 20 pageviews rather than articles, describing the payments as monthly when it’s every four weeks, completely missing the social link opportunity. The Times bears much of the blame. It is a complicated scheme with a range of options and prices aimed at a relatively small group — a percentage of the roughly 15 percent expected to hit the wall on a regular basis — but full of ammo for critics or even people who think it makes sense to start charging for some digital access.

Beyond the complications of tiers that treat access by smartphone differently than tablet or the pricing itself, the logistics are far more complex than anything should be that doesn’t require a degree in quantum physics. To underscore how complicated this is, my own interpretation of how the referred links were supposed to work turns out to have been wrong. Despite Felix Salmon’s best efforts to make me see otherwise, based on my reporting, I thought they wouldn’t count at all. But a Times spokesperson confirmed Sunday night that any link counts towards the limit. Read 20 articles from Twitter and you can read another 20 that way but the paywall will smack you if you try to access #21 from NYTimes.com. Search links are free — until you hit a daily limit. DealBook remains completely accessible.

Flexibility is free — but it isn’t easy to understand and, unless I’m missing something brilliant, the Times hasn’t cracked the marketing code. (It has answered readers’ questions and added a marketing/PR twitter feed @NYTdigitalsubs to respond.)

Following the consumer: This scheme, says Nisenholtz, is what the consumer wants. To be fair, he didn’t say the consumer wants confusion. What he told me — repeatedly the day the details were released — was the Times is following the consumer. Why aren’t there micropayments, a solution being suggested again now that the subscriptions are in play? Despite the number of people who insist they would be ok paying that way, the research showed otherwise. “Most people who we talked to felt, particularly because they were loyal users, they didn’t want to have to go through a 99 cent per article thing every time they wanted to access the Times. They wanted free and clear access over a very long period time.” Contributions didn’t gain any traction either.

“That’s the one thing the people who are writing about us can’t see and it’s not their fault. We followed the user all the way in on this. That’s where the pricing comes from, that’s where the decision to go paid comes from.”

No, we can’t see the research. For instance, I don’t know if those loyal customers said how comfortable they were paying premium prices for content others could get free. Then again, Times print subscribers have been doing that for most of the life of the web — paying for the finite version of something anyone with internet access could get for free and in more updated form. Some people think that isn’t smart but it works for those of us who do it. (I say us, because my household probably fits in the NYT‘s loyal category when it comes to print.) Electronic subscribers, whether it’s for replica editions, the Times Reader or through Kindle and other e-readers, do the same despite access to browsers. It’s convenient, it’s packaged in a format the subscriber wants, and if the reader wants more, he or she can go to the site.

Michael DeGusta’s chart comparing prices of various digital subscriptions (subtitled “The New York Times is Delusional) visualizes just how much of a premium the digital NYT subscription is compared the others on an annual basis. Even the lowest cost digital-only plan of $195 a year is higher than almost all of the software, video, music or news subscriptions DeGusta shows; the all-access pass for $455 a year towers over them all, including the $3.99 a week Wall Street Journal digital plus package. His point: people can buy much more entertainment and news for less than that one subscription and eventually, that’s what they’ll do.

Now imagine the same kind of price chart with other products. Could General Motors sell more Cadillacs if they were priced like Chevrolets? Will more people buy Korbel than Cristal? The Times is banking on a different kind of positive perception here: that enough people will pay a lot for quality.

To keep that from coming at the expense of print, although Nisenholtz insists that wasn’t the thinking when the pricing was planned, digital access is included for any level of home delivery subscription. I’m a fan of bundles and that’s a welcome benefit for home subscribers but it also sends an inadvertent message that digital doesn’t have additional value at the same time that the Times is trying to charge separately for it.

(We also aren’t seeing the promo price yet; the Times promises a special offer on March 28.)

Advertising still matters: It’s no secret that the NYTCo wants to keep its mass advertising strength. The goal of charging is to create another, eventually strong revenue stream, not obliterate the ones that exist. The flexible scheme is aimed at keeping as many monthly uniques as possible while gaining some income from a very small percent. In his look at the decisions behind the plan, Times media reporter Jeremy Peters said privately execs hopes for 300,000 online subscribers the first year. That’s less than 1 percent of the 31.4 million-plus monthly uniques in February and roughly 6 percent of the 15 percent most loyal readers that month.

Quality of reader is already an important part of the pitch to advertisers for print and digital. The addition of a group literally paying a premium for digital access creates a subset that could command higher rates.

The Times is getting an assist towards that first-year number from Lincoln, which is offering free basic subscriptions to certain users through the end of 2011. The paper will lose some potential paying subs for now but gets a chance to show other it’s worth the price eventually. But NYTimes.com is also likely to lose some readers scared away by the very suggestion of a pay wall. It doesn’t matter how porous it is; selling that idea and subscriptions at the same time is a perilous task.

Gaming the system: People who click on referred links don’t get charged. Those links don’t count toward can still be reached after the 20-article limit. Just to make it more confusing, they all show up on the meter. People who start at the source — NYTimes.com — do. People who enter through Google (NSDQ: GOOG) or other search engines get free access to five articles per search engine per day. Those who use the NYTimes.com search box and click on a result are chipping away at their limit. Subscribers will pay for full digital access; those gaming the system do not.

And in this case, gaming the system doesn’t mean doing anything illicit, like watching pirated shows or movies through torrents instead of paying for cable or waiting for something to officially go online. It just means knowing how to use the gaping loopholes the Times intentionally has left or created for persistent reading, rather than casual drop ins. Josh Benton spells out how a little coding makes it dead easy for anyone who knows how to install a browser add on or extension. You can also subscribe to the @NYtimes twitter feed and various other ways if you’re determined not to pay.

Users of major search engines — Google, Bing, Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), AOL (NYSE: AOL) and Ask, says the Times — can access five free articles a day per engine. The first version of the plans limited access through Google to five article but unlimited access through others. This week that policy changed to add limits to the others. In a scathing takedown of the search loophole — and the way it’s been explained, Danny Sullivan calls anyone who pays under these circumstances an idiot. From a series of tweets: “can we agree? it’s not an NYT paywall, it’s an idiotwall. designed by idiots to get money from idiots, the idioci. Prob will work a bit, too.”

That’s because not everyone wants to jerry-rig a reading experience. Look at what Nisenholtz had to say earlier about convenience. Some people are willing to piece together a video experience that mimics cable; others pay for cable or satellite to get broader access with less effort (usually).

But Arthur Sulzberger Jr.’s recent dismissal of anyone who would try as high-school kids or unemployed misses a big mark. The Times would be better off having more people who care enough to game the system than if people merely shrugged and moved on.

For all this research and all the effort, the digital subscription space is a work in progress and this particular plan, is still experimental. Nothing is frozen in place. Prices can change. Plans can change. Consumer behavior in research and reality may not match. The Times invested tens of millions ($40-to-$50 million, according to Bloomberg) to build the system to be as flexible as possible, including the ability to allow universal access for major news events. Sulzberger and company need to stand fast enough to see if it works — TimesSelect lasted for two years — and be nimble enough to fix what doesn’t.

Note: This post was updated Sunday night to correct a misunderstanding about the way articles are counted.

Ongo received a $4 million investment from the NYTCo (NYSE: NYT) — and an additional $4 million each from its other main backers, Gannett (NYSE: GCI) and The Washington Post Co. (NYSE: WPO) back in September — as way for the news organizations to experiment with varieties of paywalls and, hopefully, gain some incremental revenue and perhaps some new readers.

The San Francisco-based company charges a base subscription of $6.99 for access to select content from its three investors’ newspapers. Readers also get news from the Financial Times, AP, McClatchy (NYSE: MNI) and others.

So with Ongo already charging for access to NYT news stories, what’s the value of having that and the coming NYTimes.com metered paywall, one analyst asked Martin Nisenholtz, the NYTCo’s SVP, digital operations.

For one thing, Nisenholtz noted that Ongo only has access to 20 NYT stories a day. “Obviously, if you’re a Times loyalist, a regular Times user, you would come straight to the NYTimes.com and once the metered paywall is in place, pay us for use of the Times on an unlimited basis,” he said. “The positioning for Ongo is the ‘best of the best.’ It’s just started, so the number of brands is somewhat limited, but you can already choose content from us, as well as Gannett, The Post, the AP, FT and others. It’s a Hulu of news in some ways. Other packages of content will likely be upsold as well.”

In other digital activity during the quarter, Robinson noted at the beginning of the call that the NYT’s iPhone news app has been downloaded 6 million times since ’08 debut, with more than 2.5 million last year. When the NYTimes.com’s paywall comes down, the amount of content on that device and the iPad app will be limited to those who don’t agree to the fee.

Thank you. It

– Janet Robinson, President & CEO: The metered solution is an elegant solution. We look at this as a way to continue to have a robust ad sales and paid audience. We said it will take everything we need to do in terms of getting the technology in place.

– Martin Nisenholtz, SVP, Digital Operations: Another big question being asked about the NYTimes.com’s planned meter is, “Who is going to build it?” That question didn’t get answered today. Nisenholtz: “We have relationships across the industry. We don’t talk about our vendor relationships. What people don’t understand about these business models is not to figure out the pay models, the challenge is to come up with a model that not only charges, but helps us to continue to grow advertising. Balancing the decision involves seeing who will continue to read it for free, and who will pay. Heavy uses will pay.” Clearly, the NYTCo has considered whether or not there are enough readers willing to pay. So what is the magic number? Again, Nisenholtz declined to offer specifics. “If there weren’t sufficient numbers, we wouldn’t be doing it.”

– Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. (image), Chairman & Publisher: The danger inherent in paywalls is that you won’t get new readers, as users tend to avoid anything that isn’t free. Sulzberger assuredly said that the point of the meter is not to choke off potential new users. “We are not trying to take ourselves out of the digital ecosystem. He added that the NYTCo doesn’t expect the money to roll in with the first year, but he didn’t say how long the company would wait before deciding whether the meter works.”

– Rebuilding the newsroom: Despite the recent 100 layoffs, Sulzberger talked about the need to have reporters in Afghanistan or to give a reporter six months to look into the Tea Party phenomenon, and to address — this next line drew applause — “the need to get Olympics’ scores up on the site six hours before NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) wants us to.”

– On Times Select: Sulzberger: It was not a failure. We simply felt we could make more money without walling off columnists and archives.

– Blogs and the paywall: Back to the concern about choking off traffic. Sulzberger: “For the readers who come to the NYTimes.com 60 percent of users come from the homepage. There are people who come to the NYTimes.com as a destination. There’s a broad group of people who come from the side doors. They’ll still be able to read for free. But at a certain point, they’ll hit a paywall and they’ll become subscribers. Sulzberger adds: You can’t base your business on a model that just tries to please 5- to 7 percent of your audience.”

– Rusbridger rule: Slate Group’s Jacob Weisberg asked about Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger’s argument against paywalls, which basically stresses that “open access equals reach equals influence.” (Disclosure: The Guardian is the parent company of paidContent and ContentNext). Again, Nisenholtz denied that advertising and paywalls were necessarily in conflict. “Besides, I don’t think the Guardian has come up with a business model that allows them to make money from the web. A Guardian exec then offered to refute that point, nothing that the company has seen ad revenue growth online.

– Mobile and tier: Nisenholtz: The NYTCo has said that its iPhone news app has been downloaded 3.2 million times. Once the meter kicks in, it will include mobile. There will be tiers applied to the meters. The meter obviously won’t touch Amazon’s Kindle subscription offering.

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