All the News That’s Fit to Mint

There are a few things you can count on: the sun will rise in the east, winter will turn to spring, and the New York Times will come out every day. Of the three, the disappearance of the Times might be the most shocking to a reader’s sense of a rational universe.

But that’s exactly the scenario that was implied — and, Times bosses hope, staved off — by the recent announcement that next year the paper will begin charging for online access. The Times is possibly the most authoritative paper in the world and the most influential online, with 17 million monthly readers. It’s done well in most media — except the print medium that’s green and is issued by the U.S. Mint.

The Times is in the same fix as most other old-media outlets, including this magazine. Online ads don’t bring in enough to support the massive news operation that attracts those 17 million people. Last year, the Times won five Pulitzer Prizes — and borrowed $250 million from a Mexican billionaire to keep the lights on.

(See the top 10 newspaper movies.)

The online-pay-wall plan is the Times saying things cannot continue at this rate. Something has to give, and the paper is hoping it will be its readers’ purse strings. And if not? What would its fans — and its critics — do without it?

The pay plan probably won’t make much difference to the Times‘s coffers or its readers at first. If you subscribe to the print paper, you won’t have to pay to read online. If you don’t subscribe but read fewer than a yet-to-be-set number of articles, you won’t pay. If you come to an article from a link on Google, you won’t pay.

The reason: any pricing scheme that can raise actual money risks chasing away actual readers. If you lose readership, you lose influence; you become less essential; you have to downscale your operation; and you lose more readership and thus even more money. The Times‘s plan seems to be to gingerly charge its most avid readers, then gradually see how much more coin it can grab without triggering that downsizing spiral.

(See the best business deals of 2009.)

The real significance of the plan is symbolic. To a journalist, the Times‘s admitting vulnerability is a crack in the firmament. It’s like that moment when you see your father catching his breath on the stairs and it dawns on you that someday he will die. (And, by extension, so will you.) So other outlets are hoping the Times will show them a way to rage against the dying of the light, if not with the pay wall then with its plan (similar to the efforts of companies like Time Inc.) to develop content for the Apple iPad, the $499-$829 gadget journos pray will somehow make digital news as cool (and sellable) as a Lady Gaga single.

But what the Times symbolizes to the media is nothing next to its outsize symbolism in the larger world. Entire websites are dedicated to critiquing it. To certain conservatives, it’s a liberal Manhattan rag and élitists’ pedestal; to certain progressives, it’s a ruling-class newsletter and corporate tool (not contradictory charges, considering the Times‘s roots in liberal, moneyed New York City).

Beyond politics, though, the Times is a symbol of the Establishment: it presents expert authority in a populist age that sees establishments as enemies and experts as fools. The Times has always been a chronicle of power. This used to be a selling point; today, as for the media’s other big institutions, it’s cause for suspicion.

(See the 10 most endangered newspapers in America.)

Yet those 17 million readers, and a blogosphere that often seems to consist mainly of links to New York Times articles, show that there’s still a desire for an arbiter of truth. The idea that I can believe it because I read it in the Times was never 100% true, nor was it true for any other news organization. But the paper represented a certain baseline of agreed-on information. If that no longer exists, what distinguishes a news report from an e-mail rumor your uncle forwarded you?

No Big Media institution is indispensable: not the Times, not the evening news, not TIME magazine. People don’t owe us their money; we owe it to them to be worth paying for. If we go, people will find other sources to trust; in some cases, they already have.

One of those is The Daily Show, which commands Times-like faith among its fans. Last year, it did a segment on the Times‘s woes, in which Jason Jones mocked the paper’s dead-tree format and landline phones. “Look at me,” he laughed, picking one up. “I’m a reporter from the ’80s, makin’ sure everything’s factual.”

It was searing, but bittersweet too. The Daily Show, for all its jokes, cares deeply about facts. If the Times‘s pay wall doesn’t work — if nothing works — something else will replace today’s media. Something great, I hope. But I wonder if the new media would be a little bereft without a Times to react to, rebel against and define themselves against, like a dog that finally caught the car. Or in this case, the rolled-up newspaper.

See the best pictures of 2009.

See 25 people who mattered in 2009.