The Zeitgeist

The NYTimes has killed of their ill-considered “Times Select” service (dubbed a “paywall” by most observers). Thanks goodness, I say: About freakin’ time!

What was shocking to me about Times Select was how clear it was that the NYTimes management just didn’t get the idea that putting its single most valuable asset, it’s Op-Ed page, out of reach of the public diminished the Times’ ability to leverage its brand and its message. If there was ONE THING that the Time’s should have always given away it was the Op-Ed… their only serious competition, the Wall Street Journal, got it from day one: they opened up their Op-Ed pages for public consumption — and got their ideas out into the world. They charge people for the other stuff — the reporting. The Time’s decided their ideas were only valuable if people paid for them, and paid the price in prestige and, most certainly, in lost readership. The Times’ management appears to be claiming that increases in ad revenue now allow them to liberate the Op-Ed pages. What a bunch of hooey… more than likely someone applied a clue-by-4 to the back of a certain Times’ scion’s head, and woke him up to the idea that with Murdoch owning The Journal even more conservative opinoin pieces will get wider play, and that they won’t even be in the game.

Now the times can get back to being the influential “paper of record” again… well, if they stop simply being stenographers for the current administration, anyway.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS