Dug out of a BizWeek story, Paul Kedrosky produces the key stat in the NY Times considering charging for online content stories: "Times Digital sports 32% net margins, and is growing almost three times as quickly as, say, Microsoft. In other words, despite being free, Times Digital does very well, thanks, and is the fastest-growing revenue engine at the NYT Co. While online is still less than 10% of the overall revenue nut for NYT Co., it is not a bad testament to the merits of using free to bring traffic, and then using ads and for-pay ancillary services to build a complementary business."
The rest of his post is well worth a read.