New York Times to charge online readers

The newspaper is expected to announce in coming weeks that it will institute a metered pay plan in which readers would have access to a limited number of free articles before being invited to subscribe, according to a report in New York magazine that cited sources close to the newsroom.

The New York Times abandoned a two-year experiment with the Web-subscription model in 2007, suggesting that the company's projections for subscriber revenue were small compared with advertising sales.

A Harris poll released earlier this month found that 77 percent said they wouldn't pay anything to read a newspaper's stories on the Web.