I’ve been rocking the publishing beat these days. Here’s today’s piece on Gannett’s move to a metered model.

The New York Times has seen success with its subscription system, but can such a strategy work for the hard-hit local-news business?

Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper publisher with more than 80 outlets, is about to find out. It’s following the likes of the New York Times, taking a metered approach — allowing a certain amount of content to be read for free (Forbes reports five to 15 articles a month, depending on the publication) before requiring readers to buy a subscription. Gannett is exempting its flagship USA Today property from the ambitious experiment, which seeks to add up in direct reader payments what local papers have lost in classifieds and ad revenue as news consumption has shifted online. The company expects to generate $100 million through this metered model starting in 2013. It’s a risky bet as any paywall, even a porous one, is bound to cut into the lifeblood of Internet advertising: traffic.