Oh, and they've lined up Ted Koppel for free access week. That's sure to bring back everyone they've alienated. Genius at work.
So is their advertising, apparently. Hey, I hear you can get free samples of Pepsi Blue on Wednesday, too.
You mean I can read John Tierney and Thomas Friedman again -- for nothing? Oh blessed day.
My disdain for them would count for nothing had I not read them at all, young Teo. (And see what it counts for now!)
There were some cool things behind the paywall that I wanted to read at the time.
Likewise for me, but all the same I'm happy to have been deterred from reading annoying things I'd otherwise have read. On balance, I'd say I'm pro-Times Select.
My brother heard an NYT writer speak a few weeks ago, and he said that there are about 600,000 customers of Times Select, but about 450,000 of those are people who pay for home delivery and just get TS as a "bonus" on top of that.
So who are the other 150,000? I have two hypotheses:
1) Due to age, lack of tech-savvy, or other factors, they didn't have a mental list of free writers/bloggers to switch over to.
2) For professional reasons, it is important not just that they read a political opinion columnist, but that they read the same columnist as their bosses/clients.
I dunno. Why else would you read them? Aside from Kristof's world travels and Herbert's occasional cause celebre, are they doing any original reporting? Are they any better than average at analyzing world events?
It's pretty easy to find full excerpts of subscription-walled op-eds through Technorati.
So is TS officially a bad business decision?
10: Nah, I think it's good enough in the short run (3-5 years). Just not necessarily sustainable after that. Of course, the whole terrain is shifting. I wouldn't trust anyone who says they do know what things will look like in five years.
So is TS officially a bad business decision?
I don't know why it would be. What money are they losing as a result?
So is TS officially a bad business decision?
Times Select is weak, thus free.
After TS started, I just stopped reading NYT columnists, except when they were excerpted on someone's blog, and I think a lot of people did more or less the same thing. This isn't a direct financial loss for the Times, but it contributes to a loss of cultural capital or prestige or what have you: their writers are no longer the people everyone reads. It's bad for the brand.
Given the positions people like Friedman and Brooks have held in recent years, it's not clear to me that restricting access to their opinions doesn't preserve the Times brand. I bet The New Republic wishes it could remove about three years of writing from everyone's memory. Or, maybe I wish that were true. To the extent it's not, it suggests to me that, given a certain amount of reputational capital, institutions are unlikely to lose their position as ordered by prestige except over a very long time period.
It's weird that it's not true: I keep waiting for the career fallout for having been wrong about everything, but no purges yet.
No one gets purged in America for counseling war. Now, if the peaceniks had turned out to be wrong....
16: Yeah, I agree. I kind of think I started reading blogs written by philosophers out of hope that y'all could explain this phenomenon. It feels like there is some sort of epistemology issue at the back of it.
I think a lot of questions here can be answered by looking at the unnatural magnetic pull Friedman has over old, rich, white men. Friedman has an ability to hypnotize old, rich, white men which goes well beyond the effect of simply playing into their prejudices and self interest. The president of my university, an otherwise extremely intelligent individual, quotes Friedman extensively at almost every public occasion. When new students matriculate, he gives them a long speech about how they have to run faster just to stay in the same place because the world is now flat. A man of his intelligence would normally see through self interest to recognize such a badly mangled metaphor, but Friedman has him mesmerized.
My theory is that Friedman went down to Louisiana and got him a mojo hand, but rather than using it to have all you wimmins at his command, he, for some reason, uses it to entrance old, rich, white men.
In any case, 8 wonders about the 150,000 people who pay to read Friedman even though it (1) sucks and (2) is available for free elsewhere. The answer is simple: rich old white men. They can throw money around, aren’t very good at tracking things down on the internet, and are enslaved by the moustache of understanding. Comments 15 and 16 wonder why there is no career fallout for being wrong on the NYT editorial page. Answer: When Friedman stares at a member of the Sulzberger family, spirals appear in his eyes, Theramin music plays and his bidding is done.
That's the best explanation I've heard yet, Rob.
What about Krugman? And Herbert?
Rob Helpy-Chalk winning the internet, ladies and gentlemen.
21: Herbert's non-white, isn't he? Leaving only Krugman, who may be immunized against the Mustache of Understanding by the Unattractively Scruffy Beard Of Academia.
No, I meant, what about those guys being worth reading this week for free.
Krugman is the opinion writer whose written work is most likely to reflect what I think, and to express it much better than I could. I don't really need to read his op-ed pieces; I often already think it. I might join TS if the NYT held him hostage, a la the kitten or whatever it was on the web recently. Hebert is a nice, decent man. I wish I were, too, but I'm not, so I usually find him quite boring.