Comments on: New York Times brings down subscriber wall

New York Times brings down subscriber wall

russilwvong — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:02:51 -0800

As of September 18 at midnight, access to all of the New York Times website will be free. In addition to opening the entire site to all readers, The Times will also make available its archives from 1987 to the present without charge, as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the public domain.

By: Poolio

Poolio — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:04:50 -0800

Thank you, Ronald Reagan.

By: FelliniBlank

FelliniBlank — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:05:44 -0800

Holy cow, this could almost make me rethink my fundamental belief that all corporations are evil, avaricious and short-sighted. But the $64,000 question is, are the crosswords free?

By: es_de_bah

es_de_bah — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:08:45 -0800

good

By: potsmokinghippieoverlord

potsmokinghippieoverlord — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:08:51 -0800

YAY

By: geoff.

geoff. — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:09:03 -0800

Obviously the operating costs are more or less fixed. They're already doing this, everything is digitized, it just was available to subscribers. Someone, somewhere, realized that the magic Google Ads or similar technology will make more money than a subscriber base would.

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:09:30 -0800

Another company selling out to corporate interests. NYT was like the BBC (user pays), but will soon be FOX (advertisers pay), with the associated drop in quality. RIP!

By: salvia

salvia — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:11:40 -0800

Information wants to be free, or at least paid for by ad revenue instead of user fees.

By: BitterOldPunk

BitterOldPunk — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:13:03 -0800

Well, dammit. I signed up for Times Select three months ago. Fuckers.

By: salvia

salvia — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:14:22 -0800

BitterOldPunk, they're going to prorate it and give you your money back.

By: Aloysius Bear

Aloysius Bear — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:14:57 -0800

Another company selling out to corporate interests. God, some people will complain about anything. You're getting $50 of NYT content for free, and if you use Adblock with Firefox, you don't even have to see any ads. Of all the things in the world to get annoyed about, this is an odd choice.

By: jonson

jonson — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:15:56 -0800

The access to the 19th century archives could prove fascinating. I salivate at the prospect of just how many giant negro stories await me!!

By: salvia

salvia — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:16:44 -0800

The cool part is that even the archives are going to be free. I could see doing that with current isuses of their most popular columnists, but some of those archives are going to be accessed fairly rarely. That's cool. (Or what jonson said.)

By: donovan

donovan — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:18:03 -0800

Another company selling out to corporate interests. NYT was like the BBC (user pays), but will soon be FOX (advertisers pay), with the associated drop in quality. RIP!</em Right, because the NYT hasn't previously accepted advertising? Try again!

By: kavasa

kavasa — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:21:34 -0800

Hooray! Could never be bothered to register and the reg. req. links always made me sad.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:22:26 -0800

This is excellent. Can't wait! Another company selling out to corporate interests. Yeah, right, dude! It was keeping their archives behind a pay wall that made me know they were still righteous! Now that they're going to let me read their entire archives, I realize their true evil!!!! Christ, lefties bore me sometimes.

By: klangklangston

klangklangston — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:27:16 -0800

So, wait, we still have to pay pre-1987? Or is it just not available?

By: heatherbeth

heatherbeth — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:27:39 -0800

This has made my day!!! Go NYT! Like kavasa, I was always sad to see the reg. req. page pop up when I was keen to read an article. This really is good news.

By: DU

DU — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:29:55 -0800

I remember Kos predicting back in 2004 they would eventually have to do this (that's when they put the editorials behind a pay wall). No doubt there'll be smug a post crowing about this in 5...4...3...

By: jokeefe

jokeefe — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:31:19 -0800

Oh man, just when I resolve to actually concentrate at work...

By: TrialByMedia

TrialByMedia — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:33:01 -0800

So, wait, we still have to pay pre-1987? presumably, unless you go to a public library and read the microfilm.

By: DU

DU — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:33:05 -0800

Wait a minute--people who hate the free exchange of information are lefties now? I need a web 2.0 site to keep this stuff straight.

By: BitterOldPunk

BitterOldPunk — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:37:38 -0800

That's what I get for not RTFA....

By: mrbula

mrbula — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:39:21 -0800

Good for the Times. For all practical purposes it's the US' newspaper of record, and this move should encourage the search engines to treat it as such.

By: Smedleyman

Smedleyman — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:41:24 -0800

F'ing communists. *NYT replaces subscriber wall* F'ing fascists.

By: SassHat

SassHat — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:43:32 -0800

About time, fuckers.

By: bukvich

bukvich — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:44:12 -0800

It's a conspiracy to make Thomas Friedman relevant again. The inner secret cabal figured out he lost all relevance when they put him behind the Times Select firewall. Problem being . . . while he was behind the firewall we realized we didn't miss him. This is good news. And there are things I will be glad to see that were previously not available. Friedman, Rich, Dowd, Herbert and Brooks will not be five of them. They have been banished from my consciousness and I doubt they will return. Back when the firewall went up, I was reading them more days than I was not. Now it's time for the Wall Street Journal to let the information flow free.

By: Quiplash

Quiplash — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:44:45 -0800

I'm assuming the pre-1922 newspaper content no longer falls under U.S. copyright laws.

By: mullingitover

mullingitover — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:49:19 -0800

bukvich writes "It's a conspiracy to make Thomas Friedman relevant again." Yeah, I really haven't missed most of the editorials. I thought putting them behind the firewall was their punishment for being such shameless cheerleaders for the Iraq invasion.

By: Nelson

Nelson — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 18:03:56 -0800

You know, I'm proud to see how Google Adwords has helped make this possible. I think it's great the NYT can make a profit giving the articles away with some relatively discreet advertising attached. An open searchable archive of news benefits us all.

By: Skygazer

Skygazer — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 18:05:04 -0800

Aloysius and Donovan, I do believe Blue Beetle is pulling your chain (and quite effectively too I might add). Oh and this has got to be the opening gambit in the war for ad revenue soon to fought out between Murdoch's soon to be sleek, lean and mean and Foxy Wall Street Journal and the Gray Lady.

By: dougzilla

dougzilla — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 18:07:19 -0800

Very cool.

By: Samuel Farrow

Samuel Farrow — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 18:15:17 -0800

blue_beetle has an interesting point but assuming that value for advertisers in supporting advertising based content must either appeal to the lowest common demoninator, and be all about the pageviews or offer a high degree of relevancy in targetting audiences (like a magazine about boating offers boat suppliers). The problem with the web is that the former is a simple business model to follow while the latter is very hard to achieve with a general news site.

By: ALongDecember

ALongDecember — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 18:16:12 -0800

Now when's TimesDigest going to be free? HP used to have a tool for their printers called Instant Delivery, and you could print out a free 8-page daily summary of the Times, including the crossword. I used to take it to school every day, it was pretty awesome. Now it's $360 a year. More than a real NY Times subscription, which includes TimesDigest.

By: XQUZYPHYR

XQUZYPHYR — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 18:25:14 -0800

I remember Kos predicting back in 2004 they would eventually have to do this I remember a semi-sentient bio-organism barely classifiable as living devoid of a limbic system and confined to a solitary existence on the dark side of one of the moons of a distant planet in a galaxy that only this moment has received some of the first radio broadcasts of man on earth's technological development that had just recently across millions of eons of a form of evolution scientists on our planet would cry over how sad and pathetic this simple mass of cellular matter just barely establishing the biological functions to create electrical synapses that project cognitive reasoning ability predicting they would eventually have to do this.

By: jscott

jscott — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 18:53:21 -0800

This is obviously an environmental issue with the Times; thanks to their efforts, untold massive amounts of energy/electricity will be saved from people no longer complaining on blogs and websites about the NYT not giving the entire store away for free. The forest is saved!

By: LarryC

LarryC — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 18:54:25 -0800

It is the 1851-1922 content that has me excited. Bleeding Kansas. The Civil War. Custer's Last Stand. Female Suffrage. My God this is great.

By: Alvy Ampersand

Alvy Ampersand — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 18:57:41 -0800

That is pretty cool.

By: serazin

serazin — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 19:07:46 -0800

OH MY GOD I'M CREAMING MY PANTIES OVER THE ARCHIVE ACCESS!!!!

By: newdaddy

newdaddy — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 19:09:16 -0800

Dude, I got the New Yorker archives on a set of disks, and I have to tell you, what I found out is that -- HISTORY IS BIG. History is bigger than you think it is. You may think you are just going to sit out in a hammock one nice weekend and read all the history, but here's the thing; while you're out there reading it, other people are making more of it somewhere else. And when you're done reading about that, there'll be something else that happened while you were reading that NOW CONSTITUTES HISTORY as well. You'll find new old history that you didn't even know was part of history. Sure, everybody knows Custer's Last Stand, but what most people don't stop to consider is, the very name implies that Custer must have had previous stands as well, before that last one, and, since his last one was, well, historic, those other ones may very well be as well. Who's going to read about all of those? Who has time? "History will teach us nothing" (I forgot who said that, but I'm sure he was historic.)

By: emelenjr

emelenjr — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 19:17:51 -0800

Kavasa, it's just Times Select that's going away. I don't think the registering to read NYT content, paid or not, is going away. Bugmenot works. So does Google News—clicking on a Google News link to a NYT story brings up a registration-free page.

By: amyms

amyms — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 19:29:12 -0800

Great news, thanks!

By: inoculatedcities

inoculatedcities — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 19:30:40 -0800

Yes! Now I don't have to read every Paul Krugman column over at Economist's View.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 19:36:21 -0800

The timing of this is interesting. The NYTimes had an article recently about how the current epileptic-fit-causing advertising model doesn't appear to be working for commercial web publishing, and they invited comments from readers on the matter. Many agreed that graphical advertising was killing the web by driving adoption of AdBlock, but most of them would have been happy to not block incidental text-based ads. Most telling was a pack of angry, passionate NYTimes readers who remarked on how they had paid for NYT Select, yet were still delivered the same intrusive, graphical advertising that non-paying users would see. I imagine NYT has been discussing their pay model for a while now: either get rid of the ads or get rid of the for-pay model and keep the ads. I can't help but wonder if these readers had some effect on the outcome.

By: boubelium

boubelium — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 19:47:46 -0800

So, wait, we still have to pay pre-1987? presumably, unless you go to a public library and read the microfilm. The NY Times archives have been entirely digitized. Most research libraries have a subscription to it. Its even keyword searchable, which is pretty spiffy.

By: texorama

texorama — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 19:53:15 -0800

Even medium-sized public libraries often have the 20th-century archive--not hard to find at all, and in many cases available remotely from your easy chair or office.

By: Captaintripps

Captaintripps — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 20:28:39 -0800

I'm glad to see my one-man boycott of the New York Times online (and off) paid off. I've read next to no New York Times articles nor purchased the newspaper since they introduced the subscription model. Y'all can thank me in quarters.

By: dhartung

dhartung — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 21:30:31 -0800

Dude, I got the New Yorker archives on a set of disks, and I have to tell you, what I found out is that -- HISTORY IS BIG. My parents used to get the New Yorker from my grandparents. They would fill up a grocery bag and we'd take it home when it got full and start reading. You know what? You never finish the bag. The only way to read it is when it comes out. The NY Times archives have been entirely digitized. Most research libraries have a subscription to it. Its even keyword searchable, which is pretty spiffy. Even in the old days the NYT had the best indexing of any newspaper on the planet (as far as I know). The hours I used to spend in the index volumes while doing research ... well, that and browsing library stacks and library card indexes are what made me an infomaven. You just can't help being distracted by that odd entry one line up ... Anyway, this is fantastic news for Wikipedia. I can't possibly estimate how many times I've been unable to turn up a "reliable source" except something behind the NYT paywall. With TIME free and this, most of US history is now available. Now if only the Chicago Tribune would figure out the same thing. It's nearly as well written as the Times, but doesn't have the national impact. With the WaPo toadying up to the White House on a regular basis ... Who else should do this? The Saint Pete Times is a fantastic paper, but the archives are at HighBeam. A lot of USA Today is online free, but a lot more of it is at KeepMedia. (It's actually a good paper that's won numerous Pulitzers, despite its chunk-size articles.) The Guardian is free, but only has picked-and-chosen stuff from its older archives online.

By: krinklyfig

krinklyfig — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 21:30:59 -0800

newdaddy writes "'History will teach us nothing'" Yeah, but at least we got some great stories.

By: mrgrimm

mrgrimm — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 21:33:45 -0800

i don't get it. what changed?

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 21:41:51 -0800

Re: My previous comment My point was that it saddens me to think that all media is slowly becoming advertising supported. Yes, I can and do use AdBlock, and haven't (unintentionally) seen ads on the internet in years, but they're still the main revenue stream for most media organizations. To me its a way of hiding the costs, just like hidden taxes. I think there are more important considerations than "does it cost me $0?", some things are worth paying for directly, but instead of the consumer dictating what goes into the newspaper, it's the advertisers. Yes, I realize that that's how most periodicals have worked for hundreds of year, but I don't think it necessarily results in the highest quality product either. I don't agree with the idea that something is great because it has 0 cost. In fact, I think it's usually worth what you pay for it.

By: kirkaracha

kirkaracha — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 21:43:45 -0800

the very name implies that Custer must have had previous stands as well I think it more likely means that there have been lots of last stands, and this one was Custer's. He was known for making irresponsible and reckless assaults (hmm...), not last stands.

By: pyramid termite

pyramid termite — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 21:44:45 -0800

Sure, everybody knows Custer's Last Stand, but what most people don't stop to consider is he was the first man to wear an arrow shirt?

By: mediareport

mediareport — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 22:12:25 -0800

*watches editors at smaller papers frantically sticking fingers in dikes* *watches dikes explode and walls of free content crash down on editors' heads* *sips gin and tonic and enjoys free access to newspaper archives everywhere*

By: acro

acro — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 22:19:53 -0800

It changes tomorrow night.

By: redteam

redteam — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 22:41:36 -0800

Oh my goodness. This is incredible. I found an article describing Deadwood as it was in 1877: "There is not much law or order in Deadwood. Courts have just been established, and the city is policed; but the Police happen to be in league with the gamblers, who rule the town, and so criminals are apt to go unwhipped of justice. The saloon men refuse to pay their licenses, $100, and defy the law. Claim jumpers and town-lot jumpers have things pretty much their own way. The streets are in a filthy condition, and there is much sickness. Taking it all in all, Deadwood can be best described as a disorderly, sickly, sinful city."

By: fandango_matt

fandango_matt — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 22:44:44 -0800

About goddamned time. Thanks for finally joining the rest of us here in the 21st century, New York Times!

By: Kadin2048

Kadin2048 — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 22:56:19 -0800

This made my day. And I'm way more excited about the 1851-1922 stuff than the current articles; I'm halfway through a really interesting book* and had been thinking to myself "damn it would be awesome if I could go online and look at the papers for some of these events," but assumed that nobody had bothered to digitize their entire microfilm catalog, or if they had, wasn't going to give it away for free. I'm glad the NYT proved me wrong. Part of me doesn't want to believe it, just in case it's some sort of elaborate prank or something... And whatever they think their business model is going to be, I hope it works well enough for them to eventually put the rest of their archives (1922-1987) up on there, since that would be an amazing resource. I hope that someone immediately picks up and mirrors their public domain content (Google?); seems like there's a lot of neat stuff you could do with that, searching, cross-referencing, hyperlinking, data-mining ... the usual. Now, if only the OED was free! I'd never leave the house. * Theodore Rex, if anyone is interested. Really interesting because it was written in 2000/2001, just early enough to write about the Philippines War without the very obvious Iraq War parallels having been in the author's mind, which makes it all the more fascinating reading.

By: eclectist

eclectist — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 22:58:42 -0800

NYT was like the BBC (user pays), but will soon be FOX (advertisers pay), with the associated drop in quality. RIP! Maybe not, blue_beetle. Remember, everyone thought open source code was a bad idea, at first.

By: stopgap

stopgap — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 23:24:15 -0800

dhartung re USA Today: "It's actually a good paper that's won numerous Pulitzers, despite its chunk-size articles." It's interesting you say that. From today's New York Times, about USA Today:

But the chip on their collective shoulder is still there. "We have never won a Pulitzer Prize, which really doesn't matter," [USA Today editor Ken Paulson] said. "But it would be nice to get rid of that asterisk."

By: lalex

lalex — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 23:36:29 -0800

This is great. I always wondered if Dowd/Friedman/Kristof/etc. were pissed that their audience was limited by TimesSelect. I'm hoping the WSJ is the next to go...thanks for the post!

By: dhartung

dhartung — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 23:42:08 -0800

stopgap: Yeah, turns out that I'm wrong. They have been nominees and finalists in various categories, though. Unfortunately, one of those turned out to be Jack Kelley and his fabricated reporting. I thought they had won a major award for their 9/11 one year later package, but it isn't listed here (although several other awards are).

By: Busithoth

Busithoth — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 23:47:58 -0800

when they started times select, I had to search for the blogs that quoted op-eds in their entirety. then they were taken offline, and, over time, they've shown me that I can live without reading them. once they're free again, I expect to start up again, just to see what I've [not] been missing. I heard this was happening, and now I've the date for it. thanks!

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 00:54:03 -0800

Does this also mean that their spiffy desktop reader thing (which was free during beta but went pay) will also be free? Man, I hope so. I really liked that app.

By: Hat Maui

Hat Maui — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 01:13:04 -0800

"History will teach us nothing" (I forgot who said that, but I'm sure he was historic.) yes, sting is quite old.

By: Orrorin

Orrorin — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 01:14:37 -0800

They're going to put bugmenot out of business! how dare they!

By: the cydonian

the cydonian — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 03:56:31 -0800

_{XQUZYPHYR: Just so we understand each other correctly, my favouritization of your post was only because of the Pink Floyd reference. The headache I got trying to parse your sentence had nothing to do with it.}

By: Plutor

Plutor — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 05:00:55 -0800

This is golden. President Lincoln Shot by an Assassin.; The Deed Done at Ford's Theatre Last Night. THE ACT OF A DESPERATE REBEL The President Still Alive at Last Accounts. No Hopes Entertained of His Recovery. Attempted Assassination of Secretary Seward. DETAILS OF THE DREADFUL TRAGEDY., April 15, 1965.

By: Wolof

Wolof — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 05:49:12 -0800

yes, sting is quite old. No philosophy thread is complete without this notable.

By: kirkaracha

kirkaracha — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 06:35:04 -0800

Oh Sting, where is thy depth?

By: StickyCarpet

StickyCarpet — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 08:06:03 -0800

effective at midnight Tuesday night Couldn't they have made it 12:01 like the trains do, so we could be really sure which day they are talking about?

By: Nelson

Nelson — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 08:31:11 -0800

My point was that it saddens me to think that all media is slowly becoming advertising supported. Um, in the case of newspapers you're about 150 years too late with this particular complaint.

By: russilwvong

russilwvong — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 08:52:44 -0800

FelliniBlank: Holy cow, this could almost make me rethink my fundamental belief that all corporations are evil, avaricious and short-sighted. The New York Times is actually controlled by a family, unlike most public corporations. Michael Massing, Goodbye to Newspapers?:

[Donald Graham's] statement was provoked by a Morgan Stanley money manager's efforts to break the two-tier stock structure that preserves the Sulzberger family's control of The New York Times. This arrangement was built into the Times corporate structure when the company entered the stock market in 1967. It limits control of the company to people holding a preferred class of stock, most of whom descend from Adolph S. Ochs, who founded the modern Times in 1896. Its present publisher, Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., is Ochs's great-grandson. Morgan Stanley tried to start a revolt of unprivileged stockholders last spring, urging them to withhold their votes from the candidates the Times Company had nominated to sit on its board. Graham acknowledged that he was not a disinterested party, since The Washington Post also operates under a two-tier structure designed to preserve family control of the business. The Post took its modern form in 1933 when Eugene Meyer (himself an extremely important figure in Wall Street) bought it at a bankruptcy sale. Graham is Meyer's grandson, but while his family fortune may have been rooted in Wall Street, he is clearly disturbed about the modern money world's rough hand on journalism. To support Morgan Stanley's attack on the two-tier stock structure, he wrote, "is to run crazy risks" with the future of The New York Times. Eliminate the two-tier structure, and "a line of buyers eager to purchase the company would form within minutes," Graham wrote. "No one could say no. The line would include private equity firms, high-ego billionaires, international media companies lacking a famous property and lots more." The New York Times, he predicted, would be "auctioned off like a side of beef."

John Carroll (formerly of the LA Times): What Will Become of Newspapers? I hope the NYT finds a viable business model, and doesn't end up selling out to Microsoft or Yahoo or whatever, as the Bancroft family recently sold the WSJ to Fox (for $5B). The NYT isn't that big, as corporations go. Google Finance. Like BitterOldPunk, I signed up for TimesSelect a few months ago. I'd still pay for an electronic subscription that would give access to the entire archive (including pre-1987 articles); right now I'm paying $70/year for access to the New York Review of Books archive. I don't want the physical paper, but I'd be happy to support the Times.

By: avocet

avocet — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 09:05:50 -0800

The crosswords? THE CROSSWORDS? Does anybody know?

By: GhostintheMachine

GhostintheMachine — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 09:37:38 -0800

"There will be charges for some material from the period 1923 to 1986, and some will be free." Oh, and all the old crosswords will be available, but they'll already be filled in by ballpoint, with a couple answers wrong.

By: AsYouKnow Bob

AsYouKnow Bob — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 10:03:38 -0800

Now I'm frightened. There will be one less barrier protecting me from exposure to the blatherings of Thomas Friedman and David Brooks. (Maureen Dowd, too, now that I think of it.) Before this, they were pretty easy to avoid. Now, the chances of being subjected to their idiocies has increased, and the quality of my life will be diminished. (It's some consolation that it'll be easier to find Krugman. But I could always find Krugman, with a little effort.) So on the one hand, all of the NYT from 1851-1992 and 1987-to date. On the other hand, the chance that I'll be rendered stupid by accidental exposure to Friedman, Dowd, and Brooks. I'm not entirely convinced that this is a net gain.

By: spira

spira — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 10:37:30 -0800

Sorry, avocet, but the crosswords remain a paid service. A few people - people who subscribe to the crosswords and use the 1923-1987 archives frequently - may end up paying more as the result of the end of TimesSelect. And the TimesReader program remains a paid "service" as well (except for home subscribers), though I can't really imagine why anyone would pay as much as they are charging for it. Yes, it's nice, but it's hardly something that people can't live without.

By: Cranberry

Cranberry — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 10:48:32 -0800

From The Writers' Almanac: "Literary and Historical Notes: It was on this day in 1851 that the first edition of The New York Times was published in a dirty, candlelit office just off Wall Street by Henry J. Raymond. Raymond had been fired by Horace Greeley at the New York Tribune, and he intended The New York Times to put the Tribune out of business, which it did, but not in Raymond's lifetime. Raymond decided to model his paper on the London Times, which was known for its integrity and lack of sensationalism. They put out 5,000 copies, which were sold for a cent apiece. The Times soon had a circulation of 10,000, did well among the educated and affluent, but it fell on hard times in the 1890s and was bought on the cheap by Adolph Ochs who turned it into the most influential paper in the country, though it remained conservative in style, rarely using big headlines. It only began to use color photographs in the last decade."

By: bink

bink — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 11:51:10 -0800

Shit. I read this whole thread, actually saying "The puzzle? The puzzle?" out loud and really getting excited to think the crossword would finally be free, and then spira just popped my bubble. Pop! So you can get the whole thing free, other than the fraction of one page I really want? Wack. stomps off gloomily, waits around for Friday to arrive

By: LarryC

LarryC — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 16:11:28 -0800

There will be one less barrier protecting me from exposure to the blatherings of Thomas Friedman and David Brooks. (Maureen Dowd, too, now that I think of it.) Oh God you are right. Now every Friedman column will be an instant FPP here.

By: AsYouKnow Bob

AsYouKnow Bob — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 17:07:01 -0800

LarryC: Be afraid. Be very afraid.

By: Hat Maui

Hat Maui — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 02:44:57 -0800

Oh God you are right. Now every Friedman column will be an instant FPP here. nice dig at the readership, cap'n, but my suspicion is that if anyone posts anything about friedman, it'll have to do with what a titanic idiot he is. or wait, you were excited at the prospect? i can't tell any more what passes for sarcasm in these troubled times for conservatives, what with all the confusing signals y'all put out these days.