Executive Editor Bill Keller of The New York Times said most readers of the paper's website will likely never have to pay for access under the new pay model set to launch next January.

“Those who mainly come to the website via search engines or links from blogs, and those who only come sporadically -- in short, the bulk of our traffic -- may never be asked to pay at all,” Keller told me in an e-mail today. “People who have print subscriptions will get full website access without charge. So we do not anticipate a major impact on overall traffic, which is important to maintain advertising.”

Keller made the comments following his appearance Thursday at a Foreign Press Association event in which he noted that the pay Web model would begin early next year, according to The Wall Street Journal.

But he told Media Matters that the plan, which will allow free access to print subscribers and a limited number of free articles to non-subscribers, had already been announced and would be a positive change for the paper:

“We announced this months ago, and I'm all for it. It costs money to do the kind of deeply reported journalism our readers expect, and it's well worth paying for. We assume there will be some impact on readership, aka traffic, but not as much as with a conventional pay model. Under our metered model, basically people who use Nytimes.com as their newspaper, who read a lot and depend on it, will be asked to pay a small subscription price”