I was in the process of posting about this same topic. Glad I caught your post before I posted it though.
http://www.timesdaily.com/news...94-001a4bcf6878.html
Some offerings on TimesDaily.com will remain free to all users — including obituaries, classifieds and forums — and will not count in the 15 free articles.
Good news for the forum I guess. For now.
I can easily live without the online version though. Plenty of other options available.