The publisher of the New York Times acknowledged Wednesday that the newspaper will go out of print — eventually.

"We will stop printing the New York Times sometime in the future, date TBD," Arthur Sulzberger told an audience at a London media summit Wednesday.

Sulzberger's statement came in response to a prediction that the newspaper would go out-of-print by 2015.

"This sounds obvious, but it's a big deal," Business Insider founder Henry Blodget wrote. "The economics of the online news business will not support the infrastructure or newsroom that the printed paper supports. Unless the New York Times Company can come up with a miracle new digital revenue stream, therefore, it will eventually have to be restructured and downsized (or sold to a deep-pocketed Sydney Harmon-type [sic] who runs it at a loss out of love)."

Early next year, the newspaper will introduce a metered-model paywall to its website, which Sulzberger said "has the benefit of allowing our millions of readers who come to us through search engine to still find our content."