Yeah, I'll miss reading Krugman and Rich but others will fill the gap for me. The impact on the NYT may be significant - no doubt they will lose a very large number of online readers (and some advertisers), and Krugman, Rich et al will need to spend more time on the airwaves to maintain their iconic status.
Posted by JimBobRay at September 14, 2005 05:56 AM...... and so it begins.........
Posted by Sharon at September 14, 2005 05:56 AMIt'll change when the Times sees nobody is going to pay for it. Especially if several other news outfits step in and fill the void.
Posted by Daryl at September 14, 2005 05:58 AMthe author quoted in the LifeSite piece obviously can't see the forest for the trees. the corporates are going to charge. that's what the do. yes, the government is going to sanitize, that's how they brainwash. BUT there are the rest of us. free to blog, to create and to seek out others of like minds with which to associate. LET THE GOOD TIMES BEGIN! OR CONTINUE!
Posted by michael feil at September 14, 2005 06:02 AMPerfect example of filling the void: See the Knight Ridder story below.
The NYT has been overrated and very irrelevent for a long time. Sounds more like somebody retreating to their elitist tower because their feelings have been hurt. I mean the atrocious reporting and cheerleading of the Iraqi war comes to mind.
Posted by Daryl at September 14, 2005 06:05 AMI suspect that the censorship of the internet would be a lot like how napster fell. Now, currently it is a lot easier to get a lot more stuff as compared to when napster fell apart, but many more people are afraid of using it or look down on it.
I think though that in the long run these things are more acts of desperation than acts of control. They do these things to stem the bleeding from their outdated businesses.
Posted by Sterra at September 14, 2005 06:46 AMTraditional newspapers have been losing readers scince the advent of TV. This is just typical MBA style management stupidity to reduce your future market potential so that current quarterly reports will be slightly fatter. Ten years from now, the NYT wasn't going to matter anyway, there taking the one step that will hasten that day.
Posted by rlp at September 14, 2005 07:04 AM
Just go to a site like Bugmenot.com which has registration accounts for all those sites that you don't want to register for. There's a couple of them out there, and the will proliferate if there are more walls.
I use it all the time, keeps the junk email from the LATimes or Miami Herald from getting to me.
Posted by mike votes at September 14, 2005 07:05 AMSo charging money to access a service which costs real resources to produce constitutes censorship?
By that head-up-the-ass definition, the print media has always practiced censorship.
We'd like everything to be free, but somehow the real world has never worked like that, has it?
Posted by whododat at September 14, 2005 07:39 AMnonsequitor.
I always get Krugman in other places, and like I'll really miss the stellar reporting of the ilk of Judith Miller
Posted by degustibus at September 14, 2005 08:06 AMEh, do what everybody else does when any other site starts charging for admission: Delete the link from your favorites and move on to one of a million (free) others with the same sort of content.
I doubt you'll miss Paul "Write. Retract. Repeat." Krugman, anyways.
Posted by muckdog at September 14, 2005 08:12 AMwe are already being censored by the corporate media and white house proganda and its been going on for quite a while and getting worse all the time...
Posted by headxray at September 14, 2005 09:20 AMOh, come on. Charging a fee to access NY Times columns is no more censorship of the internet than paying for a newspaper is censorship of the press. Sure, it's annoying, but in this hyper-capitalist society it's certainly not surprising, and it's not like interent users have some sort of inalienable right to access anything they want without paying for it.
Posted by Elayne Riggs at September 14, 2005 10:28 AMOnly a society born with a silver spoon in its mouth could, with a straight face, call this censorship. Ask anyone who’s lived under an authoritarian/totalitarian regime. If they want to help you grow up, they’ll explain to you what censorship really is. Let’s not debase words like censorship, and reserve them for the real stuff.
I can’t help feeling that if we hadn’t similarly debased the word torture, the Bush Administration would not so blithely have thrown the Geneva Convention to the winds, and done all the shit they did in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo.