The day after the debut of TimesSelect, The New York Times announced that it would cut 500 jobs from its papers, including 45 newsroom jobs at the NYT, and 35 at The Boston Globe.

This news followed an announcement in Philadelphia of a buyout plan that would cut 100 jobs from the city’s two leading newspapers, the Inquirer and the Daily News.

Reaction in the blogosphere has been mixed; Dan Rubin of Blinq presents a good survey of local reactions here. He highlights the post of Karl Martino at Philly Future, who wrote a long and informative rumination on the cuts.

At a time of increasing media centralization and corporatization, these cuts are disheartening. In theory, at least, newspapers perform an essential service for our democracy by helping to keep our citizenry informed.

The open question is whether or not they have been doing a good job of that.

Despite faux-trend articles such as this (expertly dissected by Jack Shafer in Slate — hat tip to Atrios), I would argue that America’s newspapers have done a better job of reporting the news than America’s cable news networks, which, much more than blogs, are to blame for the current predicament.

The problem with these newsroom cuts is that they slice away at the heart of the most important function of newspapers. We need more hard-news reporting, not less. And we certainly don’t need newspapers to turn into institutionalized blogs.

That’s not to say that newspapers can’t support good blogs — see Attytood, Blinq, and the young Philadelphia Will Do for evidence of that — but its worrisome to see newspapers adding blogs to their websites even as they cut jobs from their news divisions.

Along these lines, Jay Rosen at PressThink has a provocative argument about TimesSelect: the newspaper is overvaluing its columnists, and severely undervaluing its hard-news reporting. A commenter on PressThink wrote the following:

Ay, there’s the rub.

While I certainly would not pay fifty dollars to read New York Times Op-Ed writers, I think that I might pay that much for hard news and investigative reporting. Robust newsrooms that challenge politicians instead of repeating their talking points are worth fighting for, and worth paying for.

Unfortunately, many newspapers haven’t gotten that message.

Until they do, America’s newspapers are going to continue to lose ground to upstart competitors such as TatteredSelect.

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The columns of many writers at The New York Times are syndicated in newspapers around the country that don’t charge for access. John Tabin noticed this, and just created a new blog called Never Pay Retail, which is dedicated to tracking down alternate versions of recently published columns.

Seems like a slight oversight in the TimesSelect plan, no?

UPDATE 9/21/05: As commenter Mr. Snitch notes, it looks like the NYT has plugged the hole.

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For generations, literary critics have sought to decode them.

And now, at last, the mystery has been solved.

One hundred and fifty four years after the publication of Moby-Dick, tattoologists from The Tattered Coat have succeeded in translating pictograms that Melville described as “the work of a departed prophet and seer . . . who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on [Queequeg’s] body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth.”

A major discovery that could lead to an end to poverty, the spiritual enlightenment of millions, and peace in our time, this literary Rosetta stone has finally been cracked.

Click here to continue.

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Letter From the Editor

Taking inspiration from TimesSelect, today tatteredcoat.com launched a new subscription service, TatteredSelect, an important step in the development of The Tattered Coat.

Subscribers to TatteredSelect have exclusive online access to many of our most influential posts in exciting categories such as Caption This Photo, Cat Blogging, Friday Random Ten, and Parse This™. In addition to reading our stimulating prose, TatteredSelect subscribers can stimulate themselves and others through comments and Tattered Talk™.

All of our inane ramblings, ostentatious wordplay, and hokey humor will remain free to readers of tatteredcoat.com, as will our doctored graphics, hotlinks, and popular colorized-photo contests.

As part of TatteredSelect, The Tattered Coat is also opening up its paltry archive of articles reaching back eight months and eventually back to the blog’s founding in November 2004. TatteredSelect subscribers are also welcome to read the author’s dissertation drafts, provided they have sufficient quantities of Maalox and codeine on hand.

For almost a year our readers have asked for seamless access to The Tattered Coat’s historical archives; sadly we will not make this available as part of TatteredSelect, because yesterday’s news can already be found on website of The New York Times, provided readers are “Haves.” The “Have-Nots” can find all the historical information they need on McDonald’s souvenir cups, Cracker Barrel candy boxes, and Bazooka Joe gum wrappers.

TatteredSelect subscribers can also benefit from several online services. Readers can avoid work by striving to comment on each and every Tattered Coat post. Recent Comments is a powerful alert service that keeps readers abreast of the latest comments on the blog. Live blogging of important events such as Eagles games and the Oscars will keep busy readers up-to-date.

TatteredSelect costs $49.995 and will be free for RSS subscribers to the blog.

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I received a press release today from The Washington Post which announces that the newspaper has partnered with Technorati to provide links to blogs covering its stories. WaPo articles will now be accompanied by small boxes with the header “Who’s Blogging?” Each box will highlight selected blogs and will link to the article’s full link cosmos on Technorati.

Here is the WaPo press release:

Here is an example of how the box looks (from this article):

In an email exchange with Eric Easter, Senior Manager of Communications at washingtonpost.com, I asked whether The Washington Post had reservations about linking so prominently to blogs that — given the fact that many blogs critique the MSM — might criticize the newspaper’s articles. Eric responded:

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.

I also asked Eric about how the links in the “Who’s Blogging?” box are to be chosen. He responded that those decisions will be made by Technorati, and that the links will change frequently.

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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.

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Man, they just don’t get it, do they?

Instead of choosing this business model, the Times could have gone the Salon route and required ad-watching to access content (right now, it conveniently offers a link to “skip this ad”). That would have kept its content accessible to those who could not afford the new subscription service. And it would have kept its content in the blogosphere, which helps drive traffic to its site.

At a time of intensifying media competition, while other newspapers are embracing new modes of communication, the Times makes a move that will significantly decrease its readership and influence. But hey, maybe we should cut the Times some slack; after all, not every city can be as forward-thinking as Philadelphia.

I want my Frank Rich, Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd, and Bob Herbert, but I can’t afford to pay fifty bucks for access. Too bad for them and for me.

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