Paul Krugman: free at last
Its about time the NY Times ended their stupid TimesSelect online subscription program. I follow a very simple rule of thumb when it comes to the internets: if it isn’t free, I don’t want it. There is pretty much nothing online that is so unique and powerful/insightful/useful that I am willing to shill out some bones for it. What makes the internet/blogs great is that there is always an alternative option.
TimesSelect was backwards from the beginning anyway; the news articles are the valuable part of the NY Times, not the editorial content. Krugman and Frank Rich are great, but not so great that I can’t find free alternatives in a multitude of places. Its the reporting the NY Times, with exceptions like much of its political reporting, that is valuable to me. Valuable, but not valuable enough for me to pay for any of it.
Here’s Andrew Sullivan:
The NYT reverses one of the dumbest moves in the history of online journalism. This is not the benefit of hindsight. It was obvious at the time that this kind of gambit would never work for online opinion, and anyone with a pulse and a modem could see that, including many of the columnists themselves. In some ways, it was less a business decision, it seems to me, than a sheer assertion, by slightly desperate men, that somehow Times opiners merited a fee in a way no one else did – least of all those – shudder – bloggers. Two years ago, they could still assert that with a straight face, even if the rest of us were snickering. No longer. The NYT has some great columnists and some unreadable ones. But they are not a class apart. They are merely part of a much larger and better conversation than any Sulzberger could ever own. Welcome to the blogosphere, guys. It’s free.
Yes exactly. So enjoy Krugman again and some of their blogs are pretty good. Avoid Dowd, Brooks and Friedman at all costs.
Holla at me