Most of you probably had no idea, but the New York Times recently started charging for people to read their columnists online, calling it "TimesSelect." They've come in for a lot of ridicule for this on the blogosphere, and deservedly so. The latest? The number of people who signed up for it times the cost of a membership comes out to about $6.1 million. Well-known blogger Mickey Kaus asked, "If someone had come to the NYT a year ago and offered them $6.1 million to vastly decrease their online reach, would they have done it?" I think the answer to that is a resounding no, and yet another online media outlet discovers that charging for membership is dumb, because we can get most of the same information for free many other places.