Obituary: "New York Times Select" set to die at midnight tonight.
By bluegal Monday Sep 17, 2007 8:20pm
from Tombstone Generator.
The New York Times will stop charging for access to parts of its Web site, effective at midnight Tuesday night, reflecting a growing view in the industry that subscription fees cannot outweigh the potential ad revenue from increased traffic on a free site.
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Does this mean that I'll have to read Maureen Dowd now, or will I still have a choice?
Duh!
I couldn't believe they though anybody would pay for that hackery in the first place. Pay for David Brooks' "thoughts?" Har har.
Hell, for the last 5 years there has been a conduit running from Karl Roves ass to David Brooks' mouth.
I was going to say soething about Maureen Down too. Is she popular? I do like the way she hates bush and co.
Jafari: What does "duh!" mean. Will I or won't I?
My theory is that the Grey Sagging Lady put their columnists (most of whom are liberal) behind a firewall because of pressure from the Bush Administration, who was concerned at about the time of the 2004 election that some of the more influential voices like Krugman were actually resonating with the public. This was to make up for the sin of outing the spying scandal. Behind a firewall, like Howard Stern on satellite, these voices would only be heard by a few.
And yes, I believe Buscho got the FCC to drive Howard Stern (who was among the first influential voices to turn against Bush) off the airwaves for political reasons. Clear Channel was just the beginning.
Now that Bush's power has collapsed, the NYT think it's safe to bring out its tarty columnists again.
howdy doody - the times they are a changing.
This is along time in coming and is actually how a newspaper works, anyway. Put ads into the paper to pay for it.
Wow.. I kinda stopped reading when I found that half of what I wanted to read ended up behind a firewall. I wonder if the Independent has done the same thing.
LongTooth @ 1:
Yeah, please keep her "select" too...please!
Duh! they stupidest thing they ever did was paywall off some of their most linkable content. I might actually read me some Kristoff, Rich, or Dowd again.
YES!
The idea sucked!
Yeah, I can read Bob Hebert again.
Why does anyone pay any attention to David Brooks? He's an idiot!
Get a load of this.
On September 13, 2007 . J Cofer Black. Vice Chairman of Blackwater USA was chosen by Mitt Romney, a Republican candidate in the 2008 United States presidential election, to head his counter terrorism policy advisory group.
L.A. Confidential @ 15:
Friendly looking guy huh?
http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/library/report/2004/pgt_2003/blac...
http://www.defensenews.com/promos/conferences/sofex2006/images/sofex_bla...
Did they really have to test this? I could have told you it wouldn't work off the bat.
I really missed reading Krugman and Herbert, but felt it was important to refuse to pay for TimesSelect to protest the Times' complicity in the Iraq disaster by failing to monitor Judith ("WMDs are real") Miller. I will still boycott Brooks, though.
Bo Bo Brooks is so far off the mark he couldn't win a game of Shuffleboard at an old folks home.
I'd love to set up a shell game outside that stupid fuc%'s house -I'd be rich in no time.
They played you like a cheap fiddle, Bo Bo, and all the colorful ties in the world won't buy back a modicum of dignity.
Their statement is a little misleading, though. It's not that there is more money in providing free access, it's that there's no money in charging for it!
Not the way they were doing it!
Everybody was reading, but nobody was paying! You can find a working login in about 3 seconds if you are familiar at all with basic search engine query syntax. But you didn't even NEED a login! People have posted ways to get access to articles just by modifying the url.And most of the time, if you just search the title of the article, you could find it on another newspaper's site for fee, anyway!
I knew this was going to be short lived. I mean, why would anyone pay to read David Brooks when they can get a daily dose of delusion and spin for free by tuning into FOX News?
Well, well, well. Guess there are a few snags to capitalism after all. I stopped reading the NYTimes on-line not too long after they started charging; I can get pretty much the same international news off the New Zealand Herald on-line (in fact, with slightly better reporting), and if Dowd or Brooks or any of the rest of them had an exceptional colume, I knew it would find its way into the bloggosphere by another route anyway.
I may start reading the NYTimes again on-line. I may not - I haven't really felt like I've missed much since I stopped reading it...
This is good news.
Too bad for the suckers who subscribed, though.
Longtooth, you stole my line, dammit! Although I would have phrased it "Does this mean that I’ll have to read Paul Krugman, David "I'm so white I'm almost transparent" Brooks, and Maureen Dowd now ..."
You have to admit Paul Krugman is the biggest atrocity of the OpEd page. And Brooks is second. Dowd is just a failed Dorothy Parker who lacks the requisite redemptive sobriety.
Is Frank Rich still with the Times? Or did he get disappeared. I love his stuff.
Captain Kangaroo @ 4:
Maureen may be Down but she's not out. Maureen Dowd. ; )
Jo --
Yes. He's still out there wielding the "shiv of truth". His column this past Sunday (obviously already no longer "Select"): http://select.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/opinion/16rich.html?_r=1&n=Top/Opin...
This from their letter to readers about the change.
Bless them. Where else is it still possible to find such self-importance uttered with a completely straight face?
Glinda @ 27:
Thanks! Wow! That was great!
Well...
This new century is going to see a totally new financial system born organically... One that is just, honest, abhorrent of greed, but lucrative to provide incentive for the honest... That is part of the new consciousness that is awakening planet wide.
It will not be the demon seed hoped for and nurtured for so long by the financial elite...who will be crushed by the awakened masses...
Their impotence will be legendary...
The old system is dying... hear its rasping nadar
Krugman!
Krugman was ALMOST worth it, but I never took the plunge. So I hope he's part of the deal (is it a "deal" when it's free?). But, what about those who did take the plunge? Won't they feel like chumps now?
TimesSelect was a dumb idea from the outset. Every paper that has tried placing their most heavily read content behind a paid firewall saw the readership plummet. All that TimesSelect did was steer me towards the Washington Post's site, where I discovered Dan Froomkin's excellent White House Watch blog, which posted the choice snippets from the NY Times columns from Krugman, Rich, and others. I used to regularly read the Times columnists, but I haven't missed them one bit.
I wonder if we could start a campaign to keep Brooks under "Select"? At this point, I think they would go broke. I sent them an e-mail when they first proposed the idea and asked for input. I told them I laughed my ass off at the idea of paying for David Brook's opinion. Dowd can be a funny sometimes, but not worth paying for. I've done well enough without them, I won't go back.
I like it! The rebirth of NY Times/SELECT!! Members that pay for our SELECT access can choose which no-talent hacks they DON'T want see when the login!!
Now that's what I call a business model! And worth every penny!!
Glinda @ 24:
Dammit! I hate when I do that! I didn't mean to denigrate Paul Krugman. I meant Tom Friedman. I've confused them ever since I attended a Times event one of my friends invited me to just after 9/11. It was before I ever cared much about the Times Op-Ed.
Friedman in aspect is a plumper, more arrogant, less geeky version of Krugman. But as for intellect, Friedman's couldn't approach Krugman's in a lifetime.
Effectively taking all of their most linked columnists out of online circulation just at the exact moment when the blogosphere was really taking off -- I said it then, like everyone else-- who makes these decisions? What a surprise they finally reversed it.
I worked in publishing in NY once and found them to be complete throwbacks, didn't know a computer from a toaster. Of course, this was back just before even Windows, when humans and dinosaurs roamed the earth together.
They still pasted things up using paper, while I had been using Macs for years already on the West Coast. We could keep the entire magazine, current issue plus all back issues, on one Mac SE with a 20MB hard drive. Of course in those days we had to get up at 10, a half hour before we put the issue to bed, eat a handful of cold gravel, and our father would dance about on our grave.
But you tell kids today that, and they won't believe you!
L.A. Confidential @ 16:
Oh, fuck- your face would be all clenched up too, if your parents named you "Cofer" WTF?
As soon as I read about Times Select going the way of the Dodo, I signed up for the 14 day free trial :)
I hope no one out there bothered to pay for Times Select, especially when all it took was a simple technorati search to lead one to the columnist he or she sought. That means for the last two years, I've been able to easily enjoy Krugman, Herbert and Rich, and have not even had to bother with the other three (Dowd, Brooks (shudder...that guy is such a moron) and lame-o Friedman).
I wish David Brooks and Tom Friedman's contracts were set to expire at midnight
Oh, good. And I don't use the Firefox app to block ads either. I can choose not to read a-holes like Friedman and Brooks just as easily as being blocked from reading them.
I never paid for this service, and I missed reading Maureen Dowd, but I was able to get a few columns here and there.
But inquiring minds want to know: Can those who actually paid for the select service get a iPod style rebate?
Some of the Times reporting is pretty good. They have a few great columnists like Herbert, Krugman, Rich, but overall they're pretty much a corporate mouthpiece, and they were big cheerleaders for Bush's Iraq clusterfuck. And the sports page sucks.
Didn't I read here that the NYT was caught doing some mess and aren't they pro-war?
YAY! I'm reading Krugman right now. Its like the sun is shining once again and birds are chirping. As if its that first 70° day after a hard winter and you can walk outside in short sleeves again.
"reflecting a growing view in the industry that subscription fees cannot outweigh the potential ad revenue from increased traffic on a free site."
Apparently, IraqSlogger missed the growth spurt of this "view in the industry".
Brooks is a compleat idiot, on that everyone seems agreed. He's a total sell-out to the rich and owning classes. a huge liar, even a bigger fart than friedman, who's also impossible to take. Anyone who was a cheerleader for the war (i.e. Brooks and Friedman) should be banned from having an opinion on it ever again -- and on anything for that matter as they have shown themselves to be unadulterated shills for the administration.
I emailed Davie Brooks this week, naturally about something he had recently said or written. And guess what? I got a response. He wanted to know "who in the hell I was and what was I smoking". I just forwarded the tombstone pic to him and told him to smoke on this. (And keep his resume up to date) Thanks bluegal!
Also, about that picture in the Times! That pink shirt, pink tie and those glasses, he truly creeps me out. Peace.
L.A. Confidential @ 16:
He can easily pass as Rove's long lost brother. No thanks.
Captain Kangaroo @ 4:
Sometimes I find her OTT, but her piece right after Katrina was EXCELLENT!!! She is a bona fide Bush hater, so she can't be all bad. Pulitzer Prize winner too.
L.A. Confidential @ 16:
I wan't ready for that, and I was eating. Oh well. Thanks for the pics. Fun guy... omg.
jr @ 41:
Put a tooth under your pillow and wish like hell.
[...] ramparts at the Times may be no more but, as Digby points out, the Beltway Villagers still refuse to venture outside their comfort [...]
It was dumb - it was so obvious what the drawback was - it took their columnists out of circulation. Dumb, especially after the disaster of LA Times Calendar which cost that paper two cultural critics that went to the NY Times (duh.) I had TS as a result of my sunday subscription and stopped reading all of those columnists because I thought their audience, hence influence was now minimized. I couldn't agree more with Biggus Diggus above, my take at the time it was done was to muzzle folks like Krugman and Rich as a consequence for the Old Grey Bag's leak on Bush and Co.'s wiretapping scandal - it was too much of, did I say dumb move, to be done for the not so big bucks.
"We told you so."
nonny mouse @ 22:
I'm right there with you. When the Times started charging I started going to the London Guardian among other outlets. I have since realized what little pleasure I got from reading Dowd and Herbert didn't offset the pain and agony of reading the delusion and spin of Brooks and Friedman. ( not that anyone put a gun to my head to read any of them) but I really don't miss reading them either.
Hell yes. Hebert for free again.
Too bad. NYT has gone right wing, anyway. They can have their crappy ol' worn out newspaper. I stopped reading them some time after they went "select". Now they've been unselected by me.
NYTimes Select: All the schizophrenia that's fit to print, eh? They can keep friedman, brooks and dowd behind the wall, AFAIC.
Herbert, not Hebert. Damn.
pussy_galore @ 38:
I was appreciative when the NY times took on the pharmaceutical and petroleum companies for obscene profit making. TTen suddenly, the NYT, the most profitable newspaper in the US started charging us to uview their columnists. Dos anyone see anything hypocritical about thAT? Wonder if the house organs of the oil and drug companies editorialized about the NYT greedy reach for more money?
just another rag thats rotting
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