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Fuck this TimesSelect thing; I want my Paul Krugman!

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Since the NY Times made the curious decision to invert the Wall Street Journal's policy and hide the top op-ed columns behind a paywall, they're no long accessible online to broke-ass fools like meself(only 2nd hand articles quoting parts of them). Anybody have any ideas where they've been popping up, or feel like emailing me Krugman's column(s), at least?

Still, while the desire for another income stream for a heavily-used website is understandable, one would wonder why they'd effectively remove their popular writers(Krugman, et al) from the National Discourse? Hell, there's somebody on the other side at the WSJ who feels their op-ed bits are so important that they get routinely emailed out to all the relevant rightwing apparatchiks.

(I think this is the closest thing to a "WHERE DA W4REZ AT" thread as I've ever posted...)

― kingfish superman ice cream (kingfish 2.0), Friday, 7 October 2005 15:17 (twenty years ago)

bugmenot?

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 7 October 2005 15:19 (twenty years ago)

does bugmenot have codes for the premium access, tho?

― kingfish superman ice cream (kingfish 2.0), Friday, 7 October 2005 15:20 (twenty years ago)

no idea.

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 7 October 2005 15:21 (twenty years ago)

the times is being really dumb.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 7 October 2005 15:22 (twenty years ago)

Most of the Times Select columnists are syndicated, so you can sometimes find things that are hidden beyond the pay firewall at nytimes.com for free on other papers' sites. Of course, syndication also means that there is sometimes a lag between when the columns appear in the Times and when they appear elsewhere. I suspect that as other papers re-up their syndication deals with the Times, this will change, but for now it is a gap in the Select system.

― rasheed wallace (rasheed wallace), Friday, 7 October 2005 15:32 (twenty years ago)

for now. Ah well.

looks like i gotta wait for 'em to show up in the local paper.

― kingfish superman ice cream (kingfish 2.0), Friday, 7 October 2005 15:34 (twenty years ago)

This thing has to be a failure for them. I'll bet by Christmas they scale it back and let people read the columns again for free.

― Keith C (lync0), Friday, 7 October 2005 16:31 (twenty years ago)

I suspect that as other papers re-up their syndication deals with the Times, this will change, but for now it is a gap in the Select system.

Actually, all Times syndicated subscribers have been explicitly told they can't put TimesSelect stuff online in free areas (i.e., if they have their own subscription-only section of their Web site, they can put it there).

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Friday, 7 October 2005 17:32 (twenty years ago)

I agree this is stupid as hell... One more reason for me to seriously stop bothering to go read the Times. I've been sticking with the WaPo and BBC News lately.

― Aaron W (Aaron W), Friday, 7 October 2005 19:42 (twenty years ago)

how's law school, aaron?

― kingfish superman ice cream (kingfish 2.0), Friday, 7 October 2005 19:43 (twenty years ago)

Does anyone seriously think online media is going to stay free? I mean, some of it will -- the BBC, probably, as long as they can keep their funding -- but we're going to go more and more to various kinds of subscriptions. Paul Krugman's gotta paid too, y'know.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Friday, 7 October 2005 20:01 (twenty years ago)

(Which is not to say that TimesSelect won't reverse course, I have no idea. It's obviously an experiment, and there are going to be a lot of experiments in figuring out how to turn online readers into revenue.)

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Friday, 7 October 2005 20:02 (twenty years ago)

(meant to say, Paul Krugman's gotta get paid)

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Friday, 7 October 2005 20:03 (twenty years ago)

krugman's probably getting paid just fine already.

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 7 October 2005 20:06 (twenty years ago)

For now, sure. But have you seen the NYT stock price lately? Did you see where the company's laying off like 500 people? The whole newspaper industry is in a slump, and it partly has to do with figuring out how to deal with the Internet, etc. It's only in the last 10 years that anyone has started to think they should be able to read newspapers for free, and that obviously could only last as long as it didn't threaten the existing economic structure. We're past that point, the structure is not just threatened but basically doomed in its current form, and people are going to have to invent new ones. I have no opinion about the wisdom or likely success of TimesSelect, but it seems logical for newspapers to ask people to pay something for their content.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Friday, 7 October 2005 20:10 (twenty years ago)

when will the newspaper industry crack down on people who read second-hand copies?!!??!? just think of the missing revenue.

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 7 October 2005 20:13 (twenty years ago)

and the children.

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 7 October 2005 20:13 (twenty years ago)

well, that part i don't question. i just think that if you wanna have your columnists keep some widespread political importance, you have to keep accessible.

xpost

― kingfish superman ice cream (kingfish 2.0), Friday, 7 October 2005 20:13 (twenty years ago)

So does that mean columnists had no influence before 1995 when if you wanted to read them you had to buy a newspaper (or, right, find one lying on the diner counter)? I know what you're saying, but I think people have gotten used to some things in the early Internet years that are not going to be true for much longer. I don't know if that's good, bad or otherwise, but it's what it is.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Friday, 7 October 2005 20:19 (twenty years ago)

well, it means you had to go to the uni library and find those newspaper-on-a-stick things. if you were unlucky, you'd find some communications major passed out on top of it. Seriously, dude had a drool puddle going, totally ruining at least half of that day's section c.

― kingfish superman ice cream (kingfish 2.0), Friday, 7 October 2005 20:22 (twenty years ago)

Anyway, not to be too much of a shill, but 14 cents a day is not all that much. I give 10 bucks a month to NPR, and I figure I get my 30-some cents worth a day.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Friday, 7 October 2005 20:24 (twenty years ago)

i refer you to the "broke-ass fool" in the starting post.

― kingfish superman ice cream (kingfish 2.0), Friday, 7 October 2005 20:25 (twenty years ago)

I hear you, and broke-ass fools have my sympathies. But dammit man, we can't run a media empire on broke-ass fools!

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Friday, 7 October 2005 20:30 (twenty years ago)

It's more a question of demographics though isn't it? Do people under 30 not read the paper because they get it for free online or is there a more fundamental reason? From what I understand the death of newspapers has more to do with the death of classified advertising and the impending death of entertainment advertising as studios realize the newspaper-reading demographic is worthless. Whether or not the website content is free seems irrelevant in this equation.

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Friday, 7 October 2005 20:46 (twenty years ago)

You're right about all that except the last sentence. Younger people don't read physical newsprint newspapers in anything like the numbers that older people do. But they read lots of content online, and that trend will presumably continue (although of course the models of online delivery will continue to evolve too). Contrary to a lot of doomsayers in the industry who can't seem to see beyond the inevitable decline of their beloved broadsheets (except as some kind of collector fetish, like vinyl or something), I think newspaper companies are pretty well positioned. They already produce way more content than anyone else, and as production and distribution are democratized, content becomes the key differentiator between some guy with a blog and a company with 1,000 reporters and editors. Younger people don't buy many newspapers, but they're just as happy to go to a newspaper Web site as anything else, if they have a reason to. And over time, people will get used to the idea of paying for content they think is valuable, the same way they've gotten used to paying for cable TV. And advertising of course will remain a major part of the revenue picture -- the major part -- and it's going to take a lot of different forms. We'll end up with mish-mash of subscription-supported media, ad-supported media and a whole range of things in between. Just like we have now, but in probably a greater variety of forms. But my guess is that most newspapers will have some level of subscription support, just like they do now.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Friday, 7 October 2005 21:04 (twenty years ago)


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