Back in August the New York Times Company put a paywall in place at another of its daily papers and began charging readers of the Telegram & Gazette, in Worcester, Massachusetts, almost £10 a month for access to its website. Apparently visitor numbers have risen since it went in place.

If that is so then the metered model, the same as the one planned by The New York Times itself, which gives ten articles for free, is proving a success and bodes well for the future.

The experience of traffic rising at a site with a paywall is in direct contrast to the experience of the Times where traffic has dramatically fallen by as much as 90% plus. The Times ands sister paper the News of the World do not have metered models in place they have total paywalls (is there another term?) that give no content for free.

In contrast again to the story yesterday regarding the Daily Mirror, which plans to keep news free but gate premium content such as columnists.

According to Media Memo, NY Times CEO Janet Robinson said the Telegram’s metrics were on plan” and that traffic hadn’t suffered. While Robinson would give no traffic data the WSJ blog quotes ComScore figures that show US unique users rising from 281,000 in August to 294,000 in September.

Okay, it is not huge, but then that isn’t the point. The numbers were mean to go down. That is the expected outcome.

It could be a blip or it could be a post summer jump. Traffic does tend to fall in August, but a rise is a rise and the New York Times will certainly take comfort from it.

Media Memo does highlight alternative stats that tell a different story. Figures from Compete show a 20% drop from August to September.

Even if that is the case 20% is still not 90% and it is reason to stay positive and points to possible future success of other metered models.

Some more details here from what Robinson said at yesterday’s NY Times results announcement regarding digital strategy.

“We remained focused on our comprehensive digital strategy, which includes increasing revenues from our digital sources, introducing new products and innovations that increase user engagement and extending our reach to new audiences across an array of devices. Last week NYTimes.com launched its new app for the iPad, which offers access to more than 25 NYTimes.com sections, all continuously updated throughout the day.

“During the quarter we made significant progress toward the upcoming launch of the pay model for NYTimes.com – building the systems and infrastructure to support the commerce, customer service and product requirements of our cross-platform strategy. We have determined that the model will allow readers referred from third-party sites such as blogs, social media networks and search engines access to that content without triggering the gate, which will preserve NYTimes.com’s significant reach and advertising inventory.

“We recently announced that in the second half of 2011 The Boston Globe will launch a paid subscription Web site, BostonGlobe.com, and that Boston.com will remain free. This two-brand strategy will allow us to better serve consumers and advertisers, will create a second revenue stream and will foster innovation across the sites. Our other New England Media Group property, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, launched a paid model for its Web site during the third quarter.

“We also announced last month that the Times Company, along with two other major publishers, invested in Ongo Inc., a new venture that will introduce a service that will allow users to read and share digital news and information from multiple publishers.”