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Well, it's apparently many things, but for Gothamist, it's an opportunity to plunder the NY Times of 100 archive articles each month! For $49.95 a year, the potential to have 100 archived articles for free (they retail for $3.95) is the best money-making scheme we've heard of in a long time. Just think: Get your $395 worth of old articles for free and then sell them on the street! Even if you're selling them for 50 cents each, you're making money! That said, Gothamist welcomes Times Select with open arms because this is clearly a reward for home delivery and suffering with newsprinty hands and annoying inserts (no, Gothamist does not care that the new Richard Meier building has apartment available for more than $5 million!). And also because we've always wanted to see a little orange icon littered across the screen.
Have you tried out Times Select? What do you think? Gothamist can't believe that this is the NY Times' business model for making money off the Internet site, but whatever. We did like Dan Barry's introductory video - he's all about "embracing ignorance" when he writes his "About New York" column. The NY Times' FAQ on Times Select. Gawker on the offering, Memefirst on how the interface is a bit broken, and if you're not willing to pay for Paul Krugman's Op-Ed pieces, well, it's out there for free (but you can't meet him!).
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i like it so far. but as a paper subscriber, it's a bonus because of all those added features and benefits. that's why i have no complaints. and the video clips seem to run very smoothly.
Lovin' it so far. I get it for free, since I get home delivery of the weekend editions. I would never pay for it separately though-- will anyone (besides academics or crazy bloggers like you all) REALLY download 100 archive articles in a month?
you would only need to download 13 articles/year to pay for it, not 100/month.
I hate it. I can't read my op-eds over my coffee when i get to work unless I pay now. All I want are my two op-eds a day and now I have to pay $50/year for that?
I stopped subscribing about a year ago, preferring to read the paper online. That, along with a greatly reduced amount of recycling, has been a lovely thing.
I don't mind forking out the 39.95 (price if you bought in early) b/c I do need to dowload articles occasionally (certainly more than 10 a year) and unlike the paper edition, no one will be able to steal this off of my steps!
hey you know there's this place... that has a website... where you can download nytimes articles for free!! i'm not even kidding.
ForgottenNYSelect is every article ever published, for $0.00. Whatta deal!
www.forgotten-ny.com
The Times has just closed its doors to those of us too far away to get delivery of the paper. It isn't worth their outlandish fee to read a handful of columnists. Even if some people pay it, most people just won't read those people anymore.
And that's a really stupid thing for the Times to do. Muzzling guys like Paul Krugman makes it more likely that the Republicans will just take over the entire known Universe. And since the Republicans don't like the Times much at all, that's really bad for the Times. Maybe the publishers' short-term greed has completely destroyed their common sense.
It's an atrocious idea. It's going to eventually nuke the reputations of their columnists -- the single most important element of the NYT brand that Martin Nisenholz is so eager to monetize.
Who needs MoDo when there's Huffington and Ivins? Who needs Friedman when there's Fareed Zakaria? Who needs Krugman when there are scores of well-credentialed economists shredding the Bush agenda?
.
What makes opinion journalism valuable in a world where google has replaced syndication is not wit, style, accuracy of information or cogency of analysis. It's the same thing as it was in Walter Lippmann's day: Reach. Ubiquity. The fact that we talk about these columnists because everybody else does.
.
Take that away and their cash value plunges to zero.
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Bob
Another thought:
The blogosphere comments of Times Select supporters all seem to me to be rather, well, insufferably smug:
"I got it and it works fine for me." "Mmmm ... archives!" "The Times deserves to make a buck." "Grow up, already."
All of this misses the point. Which do you think is more valuable?
The opinions of the Paper of Record -- or the opinions of a Times Select clique?
QED
Bob
The Death of Opinion - by: Alexis Enrico Santi
Another nail in the coffin of honest news has been slammed into the pine wood
box. Call the sexton, pass a shovel and let us begin to dig the grave. The
champagne corks are popping, tell me, can you hear them? The celebration has
begun at Fox, CNN, MSNBC watching them bobbleheading in a whirling dervish of
delight.
We live in a time when the truth, and the honest opinions of talented writers
are nearly impossible to come by. The daily news in America has become spun so
well that the print is no longer black and white and read all over, but has
become shades of gray, up for the highest bidder.
In a time when death, destruction and the demise of the great institutions of
the United States are seen crumbling- the revered New York Times; one of the
center pieces in the theater of public debate, has chosen to cut the chord on
its readers. Last week, with no prior notice or warning, The New York Times
introduced “TimesSelect” an annual membership to read the Times’ “select”
articles. Centerpiece to this marketing plan entails, taking the columnists,
namely the Op/Ed writers off the free dolls for the masses. The cost? $49.95 a
year or $7.95 per month. Get exclusive online access to the Op-Ed columnists.
14 day free trial! It is an annual amount equal to that of their readers’
monthly cell phone bill. Can you hear me now?
This new venture of TimesSelect was perhaps months or years in the making but
went unmentioned by the editorial board or their writers. Where was Dowd’s
sardonically laser sharp wit, hammering the board? Where was Brooks’
plainspoken logic to the move? Or Krugman, Herbert, Kristof, Tierney, Friedman
doing a “mea culpa, business is business.” Not a warning, not a note (I
could’ve dealt with an email). The Op/Ed writers missed the scoop on the one
story this year that affected the widest cross section of their readers
completely: Hey you guys, you’re gonna have to fork over some cash next week
for me!
To explain why the Op/Eds are important to me, why I take this seriously,
you’ll have to bare with my bio. I left America on February 15th 2000 with the
Peace Corps. The stock market was booming, my generation believed we were to
inherit the earth as our parents sought early retirement. Clinton was
aww-shucking his way through the dusk on his administration. Two years past and
two towers fell. I returned to America in November of 2002, to a country I
barely recognized. The economy was in shambles; my parents still were hard at
work and my generation earned unemployment, navigated Medicaid and unemployment
checks. George W. Bush was aww-shucking his way out of Afghanistan and into
Iraq. For this young, web savvy, unemployed writer, The New York Times became
the only place I could find the real exchange and real rhetoric. For the past
3 years the Op/Eds of the Times was my cup of coffee in the morning and my cup
of tea at night. Sadly, no more.
America is a country that thrives on the desire of rethinking, redeveloping and
creative enterprise. The weight of a stifling no-sided or one-sided media lap
dogs found on TV and other newspapers made feel like a stranger in my own
country. Where did the debate go in our country? When did this country become
frightened of measured facts and arguments? The New York Times was the only
place I could consistently turn to debate. Why have they taken this away? One
more pillar hath been dismantled. What cost benefit analysis can be done when
comparing the loss of true discourse on both the right and the left? Was an
extra $49.95 a year really worth it to fill your coffers?
I am here to tell you that I can’t afford it. The price of $49.95 is two weeks
of gas. It is the food on my family’s table, it is the electric bill, and it
is the collected savings my wife and I put away per paycheck. It is $49.95
that I don’t have and can’t do without. "Let them eat grass then!" I guess I
will. Have to eat the spinning No Spin Zone, and situated Situation Rooms.
The matter has been settled: Even honest reporting is now a matter for the
haves and the have-nots. In exchange for the cost of the truth, I give you my
ignorance and for any administration that is- priceless.
I gotta go with Bob and Alexis. Times Select was a horrible idea. I immediately switched to the Washington Post, and if I have a real jones for Dowd or Krugman it takes only a few seconds of looking around the web to find their pieces for free. The Times has missed the boat on this one, and angered more than a small number of people. Yes, ubiquity is almost everything in the opinion market, and reader loyalty to a newspaper in the age of the internet is essential. For a few extra bucks the Times has lost a whole lot of goodwill, and readers.
Alex:
Well, MoDo and most of the others are still available on NeverPayRetail, an above-board site that was put up to mock Times Select by taking advantage of the time lag before the new syndication contracts take effect: it just gathers these pieces from other papers that offer them for free on their websites -- a policy which has changed. NeverPayRetail has, therefore, a shelf-life before it, too, will be gone like the Krugman archive and Dowdster.
What's astounding to me is all the pro-TS commentary I've read, which assumes that it's merely a matter of finding a new business model for the internet age -- and that Niesenholz may as well be selling soap.
He's not selling soap, he's selling the well-deserved reputations of NYT columnists -- down the river.
Amazingly enough, Niesenholz has apparently figured this goodwill drop into his calculations. He expects a short-term drop in hits for the NYT site -- but that in six months, everything will be back to what it once was.
I highly doubt this. Goodwill is one of those assets that once it's gone -- it's gone for good, sadly enough.
Hubris. Greek tragedy. I told MoDo in an email that Times Select had pimped her out (those exact words) -- and she *agreed* with me.
Bob