Last week we asked you for your opinions regarding the Times' new subscription-only online package that included prominent NYT columnists and an assortment of online add-ons. Your reaction: To put it mildly, you weren't that thrilled. (Are any of you subscribing? Any of you? Besides you, Mr. Keller.)

Below is a sampling of your thoughts on the matter:

Down with "Times Select." I hope the Times management will wisen up, send those responsible off the to the Iraq front, and ditch the whole project.
James Jolly

The launch of Times Select hit like a slap in the face. I clicked a link to Dowd's column and then came the rude awakening. My response? I subscribed for a year then and there. I catch up with all the Op-Ed columnists several times a week, and I will also benefit from archive access. Until now, I paid individually for archived articles every once in a while, but more often I was skipping archived content I was eager to read because I didn't want to shell out the cash.
Sarah Kinbar

My usually morning routine of drinking scalding coffee while clicking thru nytimes.com get knocked on its ass this morning when I first encountered the genius concept of Times Select.

After all these years of my loyal readership - both in paper and online - the old lady popped a fast one on me and every one of its online readers.

Who the hell came up with the idea for Times Select? Didn't he (I'm betting the house that it had to be a "he"; only some ego-driven, bottom-line-hogging, suspender-sportin', white-collar-and-cufflink-blue-shirt-wearing guy could think up this marketing-catastrophe-waiting-to-happen) learn anything from the first online bust?

First of all, don't charge for something that your viewers can get somewhere else for free.

Sure, you might not be able to find Maureen Dowd's column somewhere else online (give it a day, I'm sure somebody will find a way to post it for free the same day). But who cares? You don't read the Times for the columnists (and if you did, you'll just go find some FREE columnists).

Second of all, don't drive your readers OFF your site.

If the goal of having a website is to keep readers interested in reading story after story, clicking around the damn site for hours, being attacked by shitty banner ads, then why in the hell would you drive them OFF your site by asking them to pay for Times Select?

And third, but not least, don't spring something on your loyal viewers. It's a dumb business move.

This just goes to show you that the guys at the Times are just not with the times.
Bill

No, I'm sorry, I won't pay for it.

For years I bought the Sunday NYT (even two copies when paper-training a puppy, the newsprint is that good). But the price kept going up and up, and I gave it up. You know something: I don't miss it. The only two columns I ever read are Krugman's and Dowd's, and I can pass on the latter. Besides the columnists are always taking book leaves so I'd be paying for something that might not be there.

I can go to the library and read the NYT for free if I'm desperate.
L. Benning
Philadelphia

$49.95 a year just to line my bird's cage. I think not.
Bob Skilnik
Plainfield, IL

I signed up for TimesSelect the instant it was offered. I read Krugman, Dowd, Kristoff and Rich religiously and if that is the only way for me to get them online then I'll happily pay. Plus, the archival access has real value. Since I can read the meat of everything else online for free, it seems a small price weighed against the $350-plus it would cost for home delivery here in Florida.
Bob Morris

I go to the NY Times site basically to read David Brooks, Thomas Friedman, Maureen Dowd, and John Tierney. Once in a while I'll be interested in Sports of the Times (during tennis Grand Slam events). But I won't be paying to read these columns. I'm hoping that just one person will subscribe and then do a copy and paste of the columns and send them to a website where I can read them for free.

Blogosphere Reaction

Beating up on TimesSelect has been a widespread theme in blogosphere in the last two weeks, which doesn't bode well given the amount of traffic blogs drive to NYT columns online. We'd add more positive coverage to the sampling below in the interest of balance, but, well.. we couldn't find any. Blogosphere reaction, according to our [completely unscientific] analysis is even more hostile than general mediabistro reader reaction. A sampling:

From Kausfiles:
A few days ago I jokingly called for replacing TimesSelect with "TimesDelete," a service that would allow readers to pay to silence their least favorite columnists. D.A.'s email has made me realize how misdirected this proposal was. TimesSelect doesn't need to be replaced by TimesDelete. TimesSelect is TimesDelete! The Times has taken the columnists people are most willing to pay for and removed them from the public discourse on the Web.

From The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid:
The New York Times is doing the rest of the news media a favor with TimesSelect. They have had undue influence for years, apparently, it now seems, because they were easy to find on the subway and later on the web...

From Mark Coffey:
Not since the heyday of Jayson Blair has the Times come under this much well-justified ridicule.

From Jay Rosen at PressThink: My own questions start with this sentence in the corporate side's press release, describing TimesSelect as "a new product offering subscribers exclusive online access to the distinctive voices of the Op-Ed, Business, Metro and Sports columnists of The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune (IHT)."

The phrase "exclusive online accesss" advertises two different goods. The first good is the work of the Times columnists themselves. The proposition that some will pay for that is hard to prove until you try, but it's simple to understand. The second good being advertised is exclusivity. You, the lucky TimesSelect subscriber, have access to these voices. Others do not. The value proposition there is muddled.

From EdCone.com:
Brad Krantz brought up TimesSelect with Frank Rich on WZTK this morning. Rich tap-danced by saying it's too early to tell, maybe it will work, or not, newspapers need to make money...I would have liked to hear what Rich thinks of it in terms of limiting the visibility and relevance of Times columnists -- you know, the interesting part of the topic -- but he wasn't about to touch that.

From Doc Searls:
This whole thing looks like an ugly political compromise between warring factions inside the paper.

From Online News Squared:
If the NYT's columnists and their "distinctive voices" fall over in the TimesSelect forest and nobody hears them, do they make a noise?

From Nuggets
: f you pay the coin to get behind the NYT's TimesSelect subscription service, you'll notice that a number of Op-Ed columnists have taken to blogging. Well, they've been given blogs. Let's see if they use them. So far, not much has been written.

From Jossip: Slashing 500 jobs across its newspaper holdings isn't keeping the New York Times from earning a "credit watch with negative implications" rating from S&P, but surely the new revenue from TimesSelect will rescue the Gray Lady.

Tell us how you really feel

In the interest of gathering something remotely resembling empirical evidence, we're conducting a poll.

Poll: Is the New York Times' new TimesSelect package appealing to you?

In case you didn't get to weigh in on the TimesSelect's decision to go behind the wall, here's your chance:

 Absolutely. I couldn't live without my darling Paul Krugman.
 Yes, but it's not so much "appealing" as "necessary".
 What is TimesSelect?
 Not really. But I was tempted.
 Absolutely not. I thought they screwed up with Jayson Blair. But this? THIS?!
 It would be appealing if it were cheaper.
 It would be appealing if there were more exclusive online offerings. And they were more...exclusive.