TIME to Put a Square Peg in a Round Hole …

… or put the genie back in the bottle. Pick your metaphor, as long as it means “impossible task.”

Last year, Time Inc. CEO Ann Moore wrote an all-company memo on “how to put the genie back in the bottle.” The memo described an effort by senior VP John Squires to develop a paid content plan for the company’s editorial brands, which include the flagship title, People, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, Life and others.

The fruit of Mr. Squires’ efforts is a pay wall that appeared quietly this week. Suddenly, when readers on Time’s website went to access articles that appeared in the print edition, they were met with this message: “The following is an abridged version of an article that appears in the July 12, 2010, print and iPad editions of TIME.”

I guess calling this a pay wall is a misnomer, since users can’t buy articles a la carte, or even through a print or digital subscription. Their only options seem to be running to the Apple store to buy an iPad (if they don’t already own one) or running to the newsstand to buy a print copy of Time (if they can find a newsstand). Not exactly the kind of strategy that leads to impulse purchases.

Time Inc. spokeswoman Dawn Bridges told All Things Digital’s Peter Kafka:

Our strategy is to use the web for breaking news and “commodity” type of news; (news events of any type, stock prices, sports scores) and keep (most of) the features and longer analysis for the print publication and iPad versions.

To which Newsweek senior articles editor Mark Coatney replied in a blog posting:

Why would I come to Time for this? I can get the wires from dozens of places, including CNN, MSNBC, etc. that have more complete, up-to-the-minute offerings. And Twitter gives me breaking news faster than any web site ever could.

Granted, Coatney works for the competition, so you wouldn’t expect him to sing Time’s praises. But he has a good point. If Time’s strategy is to make people pay for everything except the most commoditized content, then the company is going beyond The Wall Street Journal or planned New York Times pay walls, which at least give print subscribers free or discounted access to digital versions of articles in the paper edition.

In fairness to Time, the restricted content involves only articles that appear in the print versions of Time and, presumably, other titles in the stable. It does not stretch to the vast amounts of web-only content on Time’s many digital properties. But the lengths to which the publisher is going to “protect” its print content seem extreme at a time when so much content is available for free or under more flexible pay models.

I’m struck by this quote from Time managing editor Richard Stengel in The New York Times:

I think we’ll see what works and doesn’t work. We’ll adapt and change. We’re in the hunt like everyone else to figure this out … We kind of wanted to draw a line in the sand.

This is some of the most wishy-washy language I’ve ever heard from a corporate executive who’s empowered to speak to the media. Phrases like “I think,” “we’re in the hunt…to figure this out,” and “we kind of wanted to draw a line in the sand” don’t exactly convey confidence. Makes you wonder if Time Inc. really thought this through.

As with the recently unveiled Hulu Plus, I expect the Time Inc. pay wall to undergo substantial changes in the very near future.