NYT business honcho Joseph Nocera wrote an article in Saturday's Times that is missing two things: a noun in the title, and readers who are not members of TimesSelect.

Nocera's column calls the result for the program, just shy of two months old, "not bad." What does that mean? Roughly 135,000 users have ponied up the $49.95 for the privilege so far. It's not millions, but Martin Nisenholtz is happy.

Nocera doesn't seem all that happy though. Maybe it's because he doesn't like "staring down the barrel of the internet" (it's not our fault, readers! We had no choice!) or maybe it's because he knows that his column is preaching to the choir, and thus essentially taken out of any debate on the matter. It's just another interesting example of the NYT's lack of nimbleness with respect to what they exempt from TimesSelect; you'd think that this would be a good column to get out there (not that it says anything particularly new). Still, if the goal is to sell TimesSelect and make it seem like an attractive, useful option, it would probably make sense to let prospective clients see what the paper itself has to say about it.

Trying to Wean Internet Users From Free [NYT]