The NY Post is reporting that the New York Times board has decided to open up its editorial & op-ed content for free on the Internet. If this is true its great news for all of us online especially bloggers.

If you don’t know editorial & op-ed content from the Times went to the paid subscription model under TimesSelect. It has always been something that pissed off bloggers and I have to imagine consumers in general and it was a move I understood but knew would ultimately fail.

By having Times columnists behind a cyber-brick-wall of payment the paper all but guaranteed their columnists were not read online. As a blogger who links heavily to columnists it meant I had to ignore an entire national newspaper when linking because readers would have to pay to see the content I was referring to. Not the “open-source” vision of the world most of us online enjoy.

Frankly I came to realize I didn’t need the Times columnists and op-ed anyway and could find the sentiment and facts elsewhere (I would read the thoughts in the Times and then point to their source material or people who had like viewpoints) so really the paper just screwed themselves all around online.

Still it is great news if its true.