The New York Times has blinked. Its decision, announced overnight, to introduce a charge for “frequent readers” to use its website — but not until next year — is the most important development so far in the agonising who-will-pay-for-quality-journalism debate that is spooking the newspaper industry everywhere.

But anyone who jumps to the conclusion that this is a decision that will improve the predicament of all journalism or all newspapers — as many observers probably will — should think hard about what this means. Just because this is almost certainly the right decision for The New York Times doesn’t mean it is necessarily the right decision for all other newspapers.

And just because it will probably work to preserve the core resources needed to produce quality journalism at The New York Times doesn’t mean it will work to preserve the resources needed for quality journalism at other newspapers. As the Times’ own media columnist, David Carr, summarised it so well today:

People who remain reflexively bullish on free ignore the fact that the clock is ticking on many of the legacy businesses that produce that content.

The new approach is an effort to replace that ticking clock with a meter, and its success is not assured but to sit still would be dumb. It is not the job of The New York Times or any other mainstream media company to give away its content until it can no longer afford to do so.

By requiring certain kinds of digital consumers to participate, The Times is ensuring it will be in business for a long time to come. It could be a smaller business, one with less reach, but it will remain an engine of news and commerce.

In fact, it is precisely the NYT’s decision to join The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times — the world’s two other “special” English-language global newspapers with paywalls — that could actually make it so much harder for all the other second-tier mastheads in the US, Canada, the UK and Australia to induce many of their readers to pay for their second-tier content.

If I am forced to pay to read The New York Times online — which I will do willingly — there is far less chance that I will pay to read The Australian, The Age or The Sydney Morning Herald online. And if The Guardian or the London Telegraph joins the “big three” in introducing a charge, then the chances of “broadsheet” readers also paying for their local newspaper online are even more remote.

The Grey Lady has blinked. The world of free journalism will never be the same. But if anything this decision has probably made it harder, not easier, for the hundreds of good-but-not-great newspapers to generate meaningful revenues from online readers.

The Times, Journal, FT and eventually The Guardian have set the bar too high for the rest.