Well looky here once more! The New York Times, watching its revenues and profits drain out to the web, took a gamble in erecting a paywall -- and it seems to be holding.

Better still -- they're actually gaining digital subscribers.

William Wallace would be proud. New York Times execs have not yet had to drop their sharpened spears and nicked shields in the face of the everything-should-be-free-on-the-Internet hordes and head for the last refuges of newspapers executives, that is the twin ivory towers of academia and public relations.

In its third-quarter earnings release today, the NYT reported that digital subscriptions rose to 324,000 -- compared with 281,000 in the previous quarter, according to Bloomberg. [Here is the NYT official news release on their earnings today.] In total, the NYT has 1.2 million regular digital users.

Meanwhile, even as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and The Baltimore Sun (and Boston Globe and Dallas Morning News....) turn toward digital subscriptions, the Washington Post's publisher today told Politico that that paper ain't going paywall anytime soon.