The New York Times is stupid.
At least the mis-guided execs in the business office, anyway. I log in this morning and find that the on-line Op-Ed pages are now part of the Times Select package. If you want your Dowd and Krugman fix, you gotsta pay. Even Kristof. Kristof was my homeboy--probably my favorite columnist. I can live without Dowd and Krugman; their hysterics and cheap shots got tiresome after a while, anyways. But in losing free access to Kristof's work, American journalism and its audience lose a deeply relevant vocie of reason.
Update: Krugman, for free! (That God damn socialist!)
Now, Kristoff just needs to do the same thing.
Update: Krugman, for free! (That God damn socialist!)
Now, Kristoff just needs to do the same thing.
posted by Rob Moran at 10:13 AM
3 Comments:
Problem is, the money I pay goes straight to NYT, Inc...not the writers. The writers' pay remains the same. The decision to charge for various on-line content came from executives, not the reporters and writers. In fact, I learned today that a couple of them (Tierny and Krugman) are posting their columns elsewhere the day after they're published in the Times. Not sure how (or if) they'll get away with it. I also know that Maureen Dowd's column is syndicated in a alotta other papers around the country...also not sure how that's gonna work out; is the Palookaville Post going to be allowed to publish her column on-line?
Paul Krugman's even set up his own little on-line archvie that can be accessed for free: http://www.pkarchive.org/column/column.html
that god damn socialist.
That's the thing though...the bulk of NYT's profits come from ad revenues. Subscription rates have been falling steadily for over a decade now...and I just don't see that many people opting to pay for content they can get for free elsewhere. On-line advertising revenues are supposed to have been booming...limiting ther audience to only paying customers will surely hurt the rates they can charge for on-line ads. It just seems like a bad business move to me.
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