{"id":552,"date":"2005-09-28T23:53:45","date_gmt":"2005-09-29T03:53:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dbnews\/2005\/09\/28\/the-gray-lady-strays-into-pay-to-play\/"},"modified":"2005-09-28T23:53:45","modified_gmt":"2005-09-29T03:53:45","slug":"the-gray-lady-strays-into-pay-to-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/2005\/09\/28\/the-gray-lady-strays-into-pay-to-play\/","title":{"rendered":"The Gray Lady Strays into Pay to Play"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n
\n

As all regular on-line readers undoubtedly
\n know by now, the gray lady of American journalism, the New York Times,
\n as gone to a two-tiered system for their web content – just the facts,
\n m’am, for free, and the cutting analysis of media stars like Krugman
\n and Dowd for paid membership ($50 a year) in the preterit Times Select.
\n As was to be expected, this caused an uproar in the media circles in
\n general and the blogosphere in particular.<\/p>\n

The best survey of opinion we have seen so far comes
\n from Jay Rosen at PressThink<\/a>.  He
\n is, on the whole, skeptical of the strategy, which officials at the Times
\n estimate must attract membership in the six figures in order to be considered
\n successful.  Micky
\n Krause<\/a>, among others, makes the point that one
\n of the main reasons everyone READS Kristoff and Krugman is BECAUSE everybody
\n else is reading it, and it’s what’s being discussed around metaphorical
\n water coolers on desktops around the country. <\/p>\n

This will no longer be
\n the case if they go the "exclusivity" route.  With this
\n pay to play deal about as many people will shell out to read Maureen
\n Dowd as currently pay for T. Boone Pickens investment advice. Of course,
\n there are those who will question whether she has or deserves much influence
\n now, like Jay Rosen, who says she is bereft of ideas. Be that as it may,
\n she knows how to string a phrase together , especially when she gets
\n worked up, and she has been known to make me laugh out loud, and that’s
\n about all we can ask of a writer these days, at least of one we can read
\n in a newspaper. So we will miss reading her twice a week.<\/p>\n

Or will we? Doesn’t information want<\/em> to be
\n free? Surely there must be an easy way to read the few columnists we
\n like and look for without buying the whole paper or becoming an "Elitist".<\/p>\n

First we tried the University Library where we work.  We
\n had heard they had a site licence for the New York Times. Turns out
\n they did – but only for the archives. Nothing newer than 2002.  However,
\n the University also has a site licence for Lexis-Nexis, and through
\n their "Universe" portal we had Dowd’s latest column on the screen in
\n minutes.<\/p>\n

It’s not one of her best.  She is, unfortunately,
\n capable of abysmal writing as well, and does not always catch fire either
\n emotionally or rhetorically. But the important thing was that we could
\n read it if we wanted, and decide for ourself.<\/p>\n

A little more digging turned up several web sites dedicated
\n to defeating the Times new policy. Turns out that most of the top Times
\n columnists are syndicated to some degree, and that many of the publication
\n subscribing to the syndication are NOT subscription-only sites themselves,
\n and so the columns are available for the clicking. <\/p>\n

A blogger named Josh Tabin has started a site called
\n Never Pay Retail,<\/a> on
\n which he collects links to the New York Times TS (Times Select<\/em>, or as
\n cynics have noted Tough Shit<\/em>) columns available
\n for free elsewhere. Those that are not linked to legitimate publications
\n sites are labeled "Bootleg available", which when clicked leads to an
\n explanation that while innumerable bloggers have posted illegal bootlegs
\n of the columns, he doesn’t want any problems with the New York Times
\n legal team, and so will only suggest that readers try searching by title
\n on Technotrati or Google Groups.<\/p>\n

Beneath this notice were numerous comments denouncing
\n poor Josh as a pussy and a pansy.<\/p>\n

Hopping over to Technorati, we found the Dowd column in seconds,
\n for example reprinted in its entirety on a blog called Nasty
\n Letters to Crooked Politicians<\/a>. So, these forbidden fruits are available,
\n albeit at the cost of a few extra clicks of the mouse. Is it worth it?
\n Let’s do the math.<\/p>\n

We probably read a couple of these columns a day, five
\n days a week, on average. A couple of times a week we actually buy the
\n paper version, or come across one in a coffee shop. Just tonight, we
\n picked up an abandoned copy of the front section at a laundromat. But
\n say 10 columns a week, 500 a year. at a cost of 5,000 cents, or about
\n 10 cents an article.<\/p>\n

If it takes us six extra clicks to reach the column
\n now, that works out to about a penny and a half per click.  How
\n much is a click worth? Although this may seem like a metaphysical question,
\n it is an important unknown in many equations being solved in corporate
\n boardrooms and advertising agencies these days.<\/p>\n

For now, we’ll keep our dime, and click through to Maureen,
\n although if she doesn’t pick up the slack and start writing some hot
\n stuff that makes us laugh, we may drop those six clicks from our daily
\n rotation. We only have so much energy.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As all regular on-line readers undoubtedly know by now, the gray lady of American journalism, the New York Times, as gone to a two-tiered system for their web content – just the facts, m’am, for free, and the cutting analysis … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}