Top executives at The New York Times Co. went into great detail to discuss their new metered model system that the company intends to launch on its web site next year.

Speaking at the PaidContent conference in New York today, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of the Times Co. and publisher of the New York Times, as well CEO Janet Robinson and Martin Nisenholtz, senior vice president of digital operations, took on some questions about its new paywall plans.

The metered solution is an elegant solution, Janet Robinson said.

As part of their paywall model, visitors to NYTimes.com will receive free access for a set amount of articles per month before being asked to pay for the content.

The need is not just to figure out pricing and metering but how to grow the advertising business, Nisenholtz said. The challenge is to come up with a model to get both.

Meanwhile, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. said that the company doesn’t expect the money to roll in with the first year, but he didn’t say how long the company would wait before deciding whether the meter works.

We are not trying to take ourselves out of the digital ecosystem, he emphasized.

None of the executives offered any details on how many free articles readers could view, or how much it would cost once the model is running.

None of us are trying to be disingenuous, Sulzberger said, we are still trying to determine how to count certain material, say slide shows into the equation.

The New York Times