The Gray Lady Goes ‘Ho

We knew it was too
good to last. The very nature of one of our most
visited (and quoted from) web sites is about to change, and with it the
content
of
the Dowbrigade
News.  Ever
in search of new revenue streams in a climate of shrinking subscriptions
bases, the New York Times Corporation announced yesterday that they would
begin charging fifty bucks for access to Op-ed pieces, columnists and
other "quality" content.

The New York Times Co. yesterday said it will roll out an online subscription
package called TimesSelect in September that will include access to columnists
from its flagship Times newpaper and the affiliated International Herald
Tribune. The subscription fee also will provide access to online archives
and advanced looks on the NYTimes.com website at articles that will appear
in some sections of the Sunday newspaper.

Priced at $49.95 a year, the service will effectively put
behind a subscription wall more than 20 op-ed and news columnists, such
as Maureen Dowd, Tom Friedman, Gretchen Morgenson, David Brooks, Joe
Nocera, and Roger Cohen, whose writing now can be read for free on NYTimes.com
and IHT.com, the International Herald Tribune’s website.

We assume this means the paid content will no longer go out as part
of the Times RSS feeds. What a shame; the Times was one of the
pioneers in using RSS as a distribution medium. True, it was hard
to see how they were benefitting, and easy to imagine that increased
use of
aggregators would slowly eat into their subscription base as readers
realized it was a far superior way to read, and distribute, news
and opinion content.

We may have to fall back on our academic Lexis-Nexis access. Fifty bucks
a year is way out of our price range….

from the Boston Globe