Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Mr Chairman, tear down that wall!

Oh! They did! Apparently the NY Times has decided that their "NYT select" feature, that is, restricting access to their opinion columns to paying customers, has not worked. And they've tanked the program!

I must admit, it took them longer to realise that this was a bad idea than I thought it would. After all, if you want to be the paper of record, the paper of influence, you need people reading, of all things, the op-ed pages! To restrict access to those seemed ridiculous. Their whole business model is based on them being the big hitter in newspapers of influence, and they take away half of that influence????
It was clear that things were changing back a few months ago, when they opened free access up to students, professors, and anyone else lucky enough to have a .edu account. The fact that it took another six months to finish off the program suggests to me that there are a lot of internet-unsavvy "professionals" working for the gray lady still.


Yours, in freedom,
N.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good words.