Should The New York Times Go Online-Only?

We didn’t think it was a good idea before today, but a study from a university in England confirms our belief.

Over on Webnewser, there’s a story about the finances of Taloussanomat, a Finnish paper that went online-only in December, 2007. The results: “While the move decreased costs by 50 percent, revenue fell more than 75 percent and online readership dropped 22 percent.”

More importantly — especially for the Times, which prides itself on the quality of its coverage — the study done by researchers at London’s City University found that “the quality of content did suffer,” because of drastic cuts to the newsroom. The Gray Lady needs to lay off some staff, but it needs to do all it can to continue producing a print product.

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