TimesNotSoSelect?

The New York Times put two of today’s op-ed columns (here and here) outside the subscriber wall. Would they have done that if the expected hundreds of thousands of people had coughed up the $50 annual fee?

UPDATE: Yesterday, Frank Rich’s column was made available to everybody, too. Of course, giving Rich a wider audience might have been due to simple cruelty on the part of NYT’s editors. (Hat tip, Mickey Kaus.)