Mo who?
I realized this morning — as the Times heavily promoted the death of TimesSelect as a new feature (’Free columnists!’ . . . or is that ‘Columnists freed!’?) — that I could link to and quote their opinion purveyors again. But I’m unlikely to, because TimesSelect broke the habit of reading the Times op-ed page. I lived quite well without it, thank you. Maureen Dowd had long since become a self-parody. I came to think that’d I’d already read every column Tom Friedman could write, a few times over. And when I stopped reading them — because, what was the point, I couldn’t link to them — I quickly found that I didn’t miss them. Newspapers are, in great measure, habit and once broken, it’s hard to reestablish that behavior. So bye-bye, guys.
Tags: newarchitecture, newspapers
September 19th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
Should I hit gong?
September 19th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
>
So…there is no point in reading something…unless you can link to it?
Seriously?
September 19th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
This classic move line comes to mind:
“You’re Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big.”
“I *am* big. It’s the *pictures* that got small.”
September 19th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
I agree completely about Maureen Dowd. Utterly worthless. Self-parody describes it best. Same for David Brooks. Whoever decided his pseudo-sociological clap trap was punditry?? Gail Collins, however, is a breath of fresh air — at least for the moment.
September 19th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
A plethora of focused blogs such as BuzzMachine run circles around generalizations of potluck topics offered up by “rock star” columnists.
September 19th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Yes. But what about Krugman, Jeff?
September 19th, 2007 at 8:52 pm
Krugman was easy to find on other sites.
September 19th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
Yes, absolutely right. As I posted on my site, “all TimesSelect was really about was requiring a subscription fee to read columns by a handful of pretty mediocre, center-left, non-topic experts like Thomas Friedman, Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich, and Paul Krugman. Why would anyone want to pay for this when so much similar material is already available in syndicated columns appearing in virtually every U.S. paper, as well as on the web? Based upon the laws of supply and demand, if the Times wanted to offer content sufficiently valuable to justify a fee, they might have considered something in much shorter supply. Like columns that take any position other than center-left. Or those written by real topic experts, not topic amateurs who happen to write well.” (Steve Boriss, The Future of News)
September 19th, 2007 at 9:50 pm
too smart for the nytimes.
go to fark for all your important news
September 19th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
You’re probably right. I don’t think too many people will want to read those NY Times Columnists. They missed the boat for sure.
September 19th, 2007 at 11:39 pm
That’s funny, I said the same thing when I cleaned out about 30 tired blogs from Bloglines this morning. Bye bye, guys.
September 20th, 2007 at 7:22 am
[...] Mo who? (by Jeff Jarvis) I realized this morning [Thursday] — as the Times heavily promoted the death of TimesSelect as a new feature (’Free columnists!’ . . . or is that ‘Columnists freed!’?) — that I could link to and quote their opinion purveyors again. But I’m unlikely to, because TimesSelect broke the habit of reading the Times op-ed page. I lived quite well without it, thank you. [...]
September 20th, 2007 at 8:15 am
Yeah, Jeff, I guess you’re right.
When the NYTimes makes the removal of the TimesSelect a big announcement, you get the impression that their opinion columns have all been reinvented. Then when you do read Dowd, Friedman, et al, you’re kinda let down.
Too bad it oveshadows the makeover of the Web site with the tabbed format, RSS feed and the like. Now, there’s no reason to ever buy the NYTimes again.
September 20th, 2007 at 9:28 am
I’m glad that Bob Herbert and Paul Krugman columns will be more available.
Thomas Friedman, Maureen Dowd, and David Brooks columns not so much.
September 20th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
Putting the “Me” in Media…
Earlier this week, the Times announced they were canceling their TimesSelect service, which had previously meant that people unwilling to pay for premium content and archives would just have to go without or (GASP!!) buy a print copy of the publication…
September 21st, 2007 at 12:33 am
This is not only a bit of a come-down for the Times (can’t charge for your content) but to the “prizes” you get if you pay (the columnists) — as unique as they may think their insights to be, the Times gets more from people reading ads than from reading the paid help.
The invisible hand broke down the electronic wall. Friedman will get a book out of this, no doubt.