The difficult-to-collect facts would be those necessary for in-depth and investigative pieces.  I specifically called that out above as being pay-worthy.  I can absolutely see for-pay access to <i>those</i> news pieces.<p>What doesn't work --can't work-- is charging for things like box scores, election results, stock news, press releases, traffic/crime/weather.  (Excepting perhaps extremely time-sensitive subsets of that data.)<p>And if the NYTimes isn't discriminating between their quality, signature content and simple daily news - the customer isn't going to either.  They're just going to be frustrated that if they try to <i>use</i> the NY Times for more than 1 big story a month, they're penalized.  Or, god forbid, try to read the NYTimes.com at work, at the library or at a coffee shop...