I’m sure that most readers of The Tattered Coat have already checked out Frank Rich’s outstanding op-ed, Someone Tell the President the War Is Over. I think that the piece is remarkable not because it tells us anything new, but simply because it does a great job of summarizing much that has gone wrong under the reign of King George:
I couldn’t help thinking, as I read through this piece, that I’m going to miss Frank Rich when he’s gone. And he’s going to be gone sooner than you’d think.
In September, The New York Times will roll out TimesSelect, a service that will place its columnists behind a $49/year subscription wall. That means that in less than a month, many of us in the blogosphere are going to lose some important voices that we’ve come to depend on, including Rich, Krugman, Herbert, Dowd, and Kristof.
Since its initial announcement of the subscription service, the Times has outlined an incentive program that its editors think will encourage bloggers to pay the $50 fee. According to editorsweblog, the Times plans to give kickbacks to bloggers whose readers follow links to subscription content and end up paying for access. As editorsweblog points out, though, “it’s rather doubtful that bloggers will be sending subscription checks so that they can then work for the Times on commission.”
As I wrote in my first post on TimesSelect, this seems like a sure-fire way for the Times to deflate its influence and decrease its relevance in an increasingly crowded new-media market. Maybe some of the bigger blogs that rake in thousands of dollars per donation drive will be able to afford this service, but smaller sites like this one will have a hard time paying that $50 fee.
Even bloggers who can afford the service are going to be reluctant to link to content that will be inaccessible for many readers. As one writer has observed, that might be the point: this move feels like a a declaration of war on bloggers.
If the Times is serious about having bloggers continue to drive traffic to its columnists, it’s going to need to give those subscriptions to us for free. Otherwise, there is simply no way that bloggers are going to jump on this bandwagon.
If I were a Times writer like Frank Rich, I’d be pretty upset about my impending decline in readership. Sure, the paper needs to make money, but there are other business models that should have been tried before choosing this route. Salon’s method of forcing visitors to watch an ad before visiting the site seems like a pretty effective way to increase revenue while keeping content free and accessible.
If anyone out there is considering paying for TimesSelect, allow me to suggest some other subscription services that will give you more bang for your buck:
The New Yorker: $46 / 12 months (best magazine ever, imho)
Harper’s Magazine: $11.97 / 12 months
The Atlantic Monthly: $24.95 / 12 months
New York Review Of Books: $65.00 / 12 months
Maisonneuve : Eclectic Curiosity: $26.96 / 12 months
Topic: $30 / 12 months
American Scholar: $30 / 12 months
Vanity Fair: $18 / 12 months
Wired: $12 / 12 months
You might also think about checking out the columnists at any other newspaper in the nation, whose work can be read for free, provided you are willing to put up with a little ad content.
18 Comments on "TimesSelect: So Long, and Thanks for All the Quips"
JLo:
Well put, Matt. The Times move to subscription service reminds me a bit of CNN’s move to charge for video a while back. It apparently didn’t work out, and now they are practically begging people to watch the now free video. As you mention about the Times, people found ways to get it elsewhere.
What’s different–and you also reference this–is this sleazy deal with bloggers. Shall we pay a fee to Velvet Jones for the privilege of pimping out our readers? That’s how this move is playing out to me. If the Times is trying to engage bloggers, the better move might be to find ways to open dialogue, not cut it off.
albert:
I’m gonna miss Maureen and Co.
upyernoz:
the wall doesn’t apply to people who subscribe to the print edition of the nytimes (i read it on the train to work each morning). so i can just cut and past maureen dowd, or paul krugman or whoever for you if you want it.
the real impact will be that those voices will simply drop out of the conversation. rather than helping the times, it will only make it irrelevant. so while i might be able to smuggle a rich column out for you, it won’t matter as much. the blogisphere will have shifted its attention to more accessable columnists
JLo:
Hmmm…I may still have access then (I’m a Saturday-Sunday print subscriber, and I’m not sure how that’ll work). That still leaves us with what I take to be a sleazy arrangement the Times is trying to push with bloggers. It sounds like the sort of thing one might propose without ever having spoken to a blogger.
the smedley log » Blog Archive » Tattered take on TimesSelect(Isn’t it every columnist’s dream to have fewer readers?):
[…] Matt revisits the New York Times’ decision to restrict online access to their pool of columnists via their forthcoming TimesSelect service. While it is going to be restricted starting next month, don’t fret. They are generously making this great new service available to web surfers for a paltry fifty dollars a year. […]
howard:
Hey Matt,
This is a great post (and I love the title, btw). I can’t help but think back to my misguided youth (okay, my twenties) in newspaper circulation and marketing. Anyone who’s worked in print publications should understand the pre-eminence of ad sales in print news revenue. Subscription sales (in a competently-run operation) should exist primarily to cover distribution costs. If the NYT is using them to fund the news operation too, that indicates to me that they’ve got a bigger problem than just online free-loaders and bloggers.
In short, it strikes me that if they had a good handle on how to generate ad revenue (and it should be that hard for such a news giant), this wouldn’t be an issue for them.
Thom H:
Let me echo Howard’s remarks–excellent post indeed.
What does a total of $50 get you elsewhere? For me, an online subscription to Salon, TNR and Mother Jones with $5 change and free year of Wired Magazine in print.
What are some Time op-ed alternatives? Philly’s own Trudy Rubin @ the Inky does an outstanding job on the Middle East and World Affairs. She’s shamefully undervalued.
My fav NYT op-ed is that geeky Paul Krugman who has an unofficial archve–with all his NYT work included. So I’ll miss Robert Herbet and Frank Rich, but not enough to pay $50 for. & at this point, NYT should pay me to put up with Friedman, Brooks, Tierney, and Kristof.
As for Dowd, enormously fun and enteraining. But unlike Krugman, Rich or even–dare we say this, Friedman–I can’t recall how anything Dowd wrote has ever added to my knowledge or changed my mind on a policy issue one way or the other. Social security, globalization, whatever: Dowd’s been MIA.
So I wonder how TimeSelect is going to play out. Guess we’ll find out soon enough.
PLS:
I’m one of the people in the boonies who finds the New York Times at the door on Sundays, then ODs on coffee while indulging the old fashioned feel of newsprint in hand for a couple of hours, to say nothing of playing with the crossword puzzle, before I get down to beating my brain for something to feed the Worldview blog with. Maybe this modest subscribtion will earn me free entry onto the electronic version. Maybe not. In any event, the evolution of Rich into the most insightful columnest of the day has made me an addict, but not for $50. I will miss Paul Krugman’s authoritative but readable take on economics, Robert Herbet’s humanity and Maureen Dowd’s feminism and witty needling of the pompous. For awhile. My hunch is that the NYT is going to get the shock of its long lifetime: it is not the indispensible newspaper of record it once was. Whether or not it has the sense to quickly reverse course will tell us whether the distinguished old (no longer entirely) gray lady of journalism is dying of inanition.
JLo:
PLS - Aside from the boonies part, that’s my pattern exactly, for which privilege I probably pay around $250 annually. I’m not planning to spend another $50, and I’m certainly not going to pimp out my blog’s readers–either of them–to get it for free. It’s a great way to spend a Sunday, but I agree that the Times is likely to find itself much less necessary these days, much like NPR.
The Tattered Coat » Blog Archive » The Washington Post Partners With Technorati to Provide Blog Links:
[…] Great answer. I’m very happy to see that the WaPo gets it. In contrast to The New York Times, which is pushing some its best content behind a subscriber wall with its new TimesSelect service, WaPo is engaging the blog community and steering traffic to the blogs that steer so much traffic to it. […]
The Tattered Coat » Blog Archive » Sunday Gems:
[…] Frank Rich: Falluja Floods the Superdome. Just read it all. And remember that because of TimesSelect, most of us won’t have Frank Rich, Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd, and Bob Herbert around for much longer, unless the New York Times comes to its senses and follows the example of The Washington Post. […]
Mister Snitch!:
Will fans pay to read New York Times’ columnists?
No… but if the Times really wants a new revenue source, may we suggest charging to keep certain columnists OUT of the paper?
Rod:
I would pay not to have to read some of these people, for sure.
But it turns out that as a lowly weekend subscriber, I do nevertheless get access to Times Select, ’cause I just registered without incident.
Once again, I beat the man at his own sneaky game.
The Tattered Coat » Blog Archive » Talk Like a Pirate Day:
[…] Finally, one has to wonder: is it just a coincidence that The New York Times unveiled TimesSelect on “Talk Like a Pirate Day”? […]
Jay Lapidus:
If you are willing to wait a day or so, you’ll find NYT columnists syndicated elsewhere on the web legally and for free. Here is Frank Rich’s column of 9/18/05:
http://jaysoundsoff.blogspot.com/2005/09/frank-rich-courtesy-of-taiwan-news.html
Jay Lapidus:
My link named in my previous comment mysteriously disappeared from my blogsite.
Here’s the direct link to the Taiwan News with Frank Rich’s column:
http://www.etaiwannews.com/Opinion/2005/09/19/1127096744.htm
Matt:
Just found a new site called Never Pay Retail, which is dedicated to finding syndicated versions of NYT columnists.
Jennifer:
I’ve been reading the NY Times online for 10 years. Hitting the op-ed column has been a part of my day for so long that I thought I’d never get used to not having Dowd, Friedman, Krugman, et. al. a mouse-click away. However, I’ve now been without them for however long its been since the Times implemented this ridiculous TimesSelect program ($50 a year? Are you kidding me? I’d maybe pay $20 but no more than that.), and I’ve moved on quite nicely, thank you. I’m finding I’m spending a lot less time on the Internet, which has its own advantages. This is a bad, bad move by the Times. What’s really interesting is that all those Op-Ed columns used to be at the top of their most e-mailed lists, but not anymore. People obviously don’t want to pay for it if that’s all they’re getting. It’s the columnists themselves I feel sorry for.
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