The Gray Lady Strays into Pay to Play

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 of media stars like Krugman
and Dowd for paid membership ($50 a year) in the preterit Times Select.
As was to be expected, this caused an uproar in the media circles in
general and the blogosphere in particular.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beneath this notice were numerous comments denouncing
poor Josh as a pussy and a pansy.

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

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

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

For now, we’ll keep our dime, and click through to Maureen,
although if she doesn’t pick up the slack and start writing some hot
stuff that makes us laugh, we may drop those six clicks from our daily
rotation. We only have so much energy.