Remember how you felt when you just knew the betamax was toast? Remember where you were when you realized 'dot com' stocks were a fraud? Remember how after using netflix for a month when you drove by the "blockbuster video" and you just laughed?

Thats how I felt when I saw that the NY times now wanted me to pay for the worst content on their site.

10 years from now we will talk about the New York Times the way the old timers talked about the New York Herald.

I agree with Frank.

Interestingly, I had the same thought when I was watching the Emmys on Sunday night. The recognition of Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, and Peter Jennings was a tacit memorial to network news and its role in American information gathering. Clearly, with the retirement of Tom Brokaw, the "retirement" of Dan Rather, and the passing of Peter Jennings, an era in broadcast journalism is also past.

Ironic that the NYT corp should announce the end of another facet of the old media this week as well.

re: "Stuck on stupid"

Good lord, not even a day old and I'm already sick of it. If there's anything US political discussion (regardless of ideology) needs less right now than a "funny" new way to call people names and avoid substantive discussion I can't think of what it is.

Expect a similar announcement from the WaPo group soon, too.

The NYT may see its revenues go down. It is a fairly well accepted Micro-econ theory that after prices get so high revenue actually falls. Marty Lafer proved the same thing in the Macro world 30 years ago. "Supply Side Econ" Ronnie proved it works with his tax cuts of 25%(1981-1984) that actually raised revenue in the late 80's.
The name of the micro theory is "Elasticity". It usually works. GM in the late 70's and early 80's is a classic case. In "Real$" their revenue fell almost as fast as their market share even though they were raising prices at a rate that doubled every 7 years,

Michael Farris:
I disagree that "stuck on stupid" amounts to name calling. If someone tells me I have asked a dumb question, or that I have failed to grasp what subject we are exploring, that is NOT the same as them saying, categorically, "Terry, you are just plain stupid".

The way you can tell if a criticism is, for sure, a personal attack or not is to add the phrase "and you are better than that" to the end of it, and/or "in this instance" at the front of it. Try it.

Furthermore, while it CAN be used to stifle discussion, and no doubt will, using the "stuck on stupid" phrase can also serve to move a discussion forward into a more relevant vein. Which is exactly what Honore was attempting to do.

They're forcing people to pay for opinions they can get most anywhere else for free, while cutting back on doing the one thing they can still do better than anyone else.

Why, that just sounds like good ole American business know-how to me! Yee-haw!

If your local library subscribes to a database called "America's Newspapers" the online version of the NYT is available through that database free to patrons. In NC at least, that db is part of a package provided to all libraries by state funds so it's accessible at all public libraries, all community college libraries and most university libraries.

I await the first example of anybody going broke hitting up moonbats to hear what they already believe.

Whenever I get down on the dumps, you know, sad about the world and mortality and stuff? Then I just think back to that hippie chick that sold her bicycle to contribute to the Dean campaign. That makes me laugh and laugh.

So I guess I disagree. I think you'll be surprised at how excited these moonbats will be to not only hear what they wish to hear, but not be confronted with criticism of same.

Has anyone (especially th NYT) considered that a significant part of the pre-firewall editorial traffic was driven by the internet (Blogs & Drudge, etc.), and that a considerable portion of that traffic was bloggers/blog readers who just read the editorials to see the lefty neuroses and poke fun at the animals in the zoo?

I think the NYT is in for a bigger shock than anyone expects.

Ciao

Wait, I thought it was only heartless Republican capitalist corporations that "downsized," throwing valuable human beings out of work. You know, the ones that also use eminent domain to take other people's property.
Oh, wait.

Fire the NYT sub editors before the (often superb) reporters who work for the paper of record. After 12 years here, I'm still waiting for my grumpy impatience over the arrogantly soporific headlines and frequently whimsical softball story intros in the NYT to ebb. It hasn't. Blogs now gut MSM with such precision - and panache - that the awful journalism school mandated house style of the NYT is even more of a liability. It's not that the UK MSM press is better at reporting, just that NYT reporters are so ill-served by moribund "packaging". (Also heartily agree with kjl above)

Hell, I don't even think it takes super human talent to write news articles. You can train a reasonably intelligent chimp to write AP-style. The tough part is getting the news in the first place, and deciding what should go into the article. The MSM is still, for all its faults, pretty good at that.

Every time I hear how indispensable these reporters are as first suppliers of information to the blogosphere, I wonder why not of these journalism majors have gotten up and organized their own reporting service to sell their product direct to subscribing blogs.

Of course, that would involve more than just sitting around the hotel talking to the bell captain or recycling one party or the other's prepackaged talking points...

This means that nasty headlines written by the nasty Maureen Dowd will no longer show up in Google searches. Her idiocy will be displayed only to those with access to Times Direct. This pleases me a great deal.

Richard - Who the hell would pay? Bloggers link people to these sites(with the ad revenue that that implies) because it's free for both linker and link-follower. If you've ever seen a blog link to a pay-only article, I'd be quite impressed, and if you could convince a blogger to pay to link people to a site, I'd suggest that you have a lucrative career awaiting you selling snow in Alaska.

Shameless self-pimpage, but Honore should be honored... NotStuck.com