For nearly 40 minutes, top executives from The New York Times Co. (NYSE: NYT) took questions from interviewer Staci D. Kramer, co-editor and EVP of ContentNext Media, and participants in paidContent 2010. Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., chairman and publisher; Janet Robinson, president and CEO; and Martin Nisenholtz, SVP-digital operations, knew the interest would be intense but while they were willing to buy lunch, they weren’t ready to feed the appetite for detail about plans for NYTimes.com to go metered in 2011. Instead, much of the focus was on strategy. Sulzberger insisted the new model isn’t intended to choke off traffic and new users, while Nisenholtz said the challenge is creating a model that charges while growing advertising—and Robinson tried very hard to convince people a meter isn’t a paywall. The Q&A includes exchanges with The Guardian‘s Emily Bell; Slate’s Jacob Weisberg and Reuters’ Felix Salmon.