The long-running debate around pay walls for online news sites seems to be moving into reality.

Following recent announcements by the Sunday Times and News International, Nieman Journalism Lab has this report on Rhode Island’s Newport Daily News.

The 12,000-circulation paper has introduced a three-tier pricing structure for print/online subscriptions (see the video below).

Meanwhile, paidContent.org reports that ESPN The Magazine is introduced paid-for online content.

On the subject, Salon co-founder Scott Rosenberg’s post is well worth a read (via Mark Potts). Rosenberg has experience in the field – “[A]t Salon we tried every online revenue strategy you can imagine,” he writes.

“Yes, 2009 is different from 2000-2002. But the fundamental lesson remains: you can get some revenue from readers, and there’s nothing wrong with trying; but if in doing so you cut yourself off from the rest of the web in any way, you are dooming yourself to irrelevance and financial decline.”