Slashdot Mirror
NY Times Op-Ed Page Goes Subscriber-Only
kevinatilusa writes "The New York Times has announced an expanded subscription service to be launched this September. Subscriptions will cost $49.95 per year and include access to both the Times archives (currently available on a pay-by-the-article basis) and to the paper's op-ed columnists (currently available for free, but probably not for long). The Times also posted a more detailed explanation (registration required) for their decision."
third post
funny that they require registration to explain the new registration
Well, it's about time(s)
but why is this important?
is the NYT important at all anymore?
not trolling, just asking!
As expected. Seems the NYT is going more and more subscription oriented. I must really ask...What is the benifit on their side for the public to register to read articles online? Just to be able to sell their emails?
Isn't it interesting that you need a, (albeit free), subscription to see how they are changing the free subscriptions to paid-ones? Like ok, here we are changing them, then *NYTimes slaps you!* Ouch.
public class null extends java applet { System.out.print ("Tabula Rasa"); }
Does this mean in a short while the only source for free online commentary is going to be blogs?
The Times also posted a more detailed explanation (registration required) for their decision.
"We're greedy bastards!"?
When was it important? When was the media EVER important? It's either misinformation, lies, or both, sensationalized reading for a world who wants "shock". If I hear about I want truth, not a story.
Lets take an Ad based media business in meatspace, and try to move it to cyberspace, (I hate that word) but heres the kicker, instead of being and ad based cash flow, lets be subscription based.
Somehow I don't see this working, and I am fairly sure taht the subscribers still get nailed with ads even on the older articles.
On the other hand, full access to their archives is worth a few bucks a year (think 20), but their OP page is worth less than the electrons needed to display it.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
...Slashdot will finally stop linking to NY Times articles? Regardless of bugmenot.com, the whole registration thing just didn't go over well. There's plenty of other news sources besides NYTimes. Plenty!
...that slashdot will stop linking to them?
Not trying to troll, but what's the point of linking to a story when most of your readership can't/won't subscribe to read it?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Let's see, increasing prices in a dying industry. That makes a lot of sense, right?
I personally liked the op-eds. Oh well, at least they'll still have their articles. I guess I'll just read blogs. There's enough opinion posted on blogs to fill volumes of their Times.
(to posters: Do you consider the Slashdot news pages blogs?)
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
The NY Times is extremely relevant to today's world. For example, they give BugMeNot a reason to exist. You don't want to put the hardworking folks at BugMeNot out of business, do you?
Besides, there are plenty of good independent op-ed news sources out there that will remain free.
Roland Piquepaille, for instance.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
Just curious. Does anybody here actually read it?
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
Hell just go to your bartender or shrink. Or mom, and get it for free. I'll give you mine at a deep discount.
Faith: n. -- That human impulse that drives them to steal appliances when the power goes out
they played with the idea of paying the readers to read *selected* editorial writers. However, they opted for the subscription model thinking it would be the easier sell.
Sorry NYT, too many varied sources with free news. No one gives a shit about paying for news.
The Nytimes is for people with a brain and not seeking titilation. The columnists there defined the talking points of most politically active people. Sure there's the washington post and the LA times which shines in invesitgative news but not so much in analysis or quantity of elite columninsts.
Of course many people liek USA today, wired and salon for quick adrenline producing flash-in-the pan news story. Get that dopmine perk then forget what you just read cause it contained only information and mabe some extrapolative speculation but no serious analysis. That's the distraction you seek, your brain emits some domapmine as a reward.
One the other hand look to the times to tell you in depth penetrating detail the nuances of polotics and regulation and the things that believe it or not actually affect your standard of living more than next nintendo or future shock piece in wired.
Want to interpret what the heck is going on in the middle east. Who yuo gonna read first: freidman or some pre-pubesent web site or god forbid fox news?
Since this comment exceed three paragraphs I seriously doubt you even read it.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
that's a lot of inflation there, boy howdy
They also seem to have stopped allowing you to read articles without registration if you set your user agent to googlebot.
English is easier said than done.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
The New York Times announced yesterday that it would offer a new subscription-based service on its Web site, charging users an annual fee to read its Op-Ed and news columnists, as the newspaper seeks ways to capitalize on the site's popularity.
Press Release (nytco.com) Most material on the Web site, NYTimes.com, will remain free to users, The Times said, but columnists from The Times and The International Herald Tribune will be available only to users who sign up for TimesSelect, which will cost $49.95 a year. The service will also include access to The Times's online archives, as well as other features.
The service, which is scheduled to start in September, will be provided free to home-delivery subscribers of the newspaper.
A decision by The Times about charging users for portions of its Web site had been expected for months in the media industry. While some efforts by other newspapers to charge for content online have worked, others have been withdrawn, including most recently one by The Los Angeles Times, which decided last week to stop charging users a fee for its online entertainment listings, reviews and criticism.
Though advertising on Web sites accounts for only 2 to 3 percent of the revenues of most newspapers, it is the fastest-growing source of revenue. Still, many newspaper Web sites fear that charging money for Internet content may send readers to free sites, with advertisers following close behind.
The New York Times's decision to charge a fee came after about a year of study, said Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of the Times Company and publisher of the newspaper.
Mr. Sulzberger said that while some Internet users accustomed to free content might not be willing to pay, many others would be attracted by the online package of columnists, archives and other material.
"The advertising growth on the Web has been just spectacular the last few years," he said. "But like any business, it's going to mature over time, and when that happens, it will flatten and then you'll get into the normal cycles just like we do it on print. And at that point you're really going to need to have another revenue model."
He added, "This is going to help sustain the quality of the information that we make available."
Alexia S. Quadrani, a senior managing director at Bear, Stearns who follows the publishing and advertising industries, said The Times's plan made sense as a business model.
"All newspapers are looking for new advertising revenue and The New York Times realizes they have high-quality content and are looking at other ways to capitalize on it," she said. "The key is to that you want to maximize the dollars you get on the Internet without alienating the people."
In April, The Times's Web site had 1.7 million unique daily visitors. Its daily newspaper circulation in March 2005, the most recent month available, was 1,136,433.
The Times already charges for some content, including its crossword puzzle, news alerts and online archive. Articles are free for seven days after publication; a fee is charged once they are archived.
TimesSelect will also provide subscribers access to TimesPast, the paper's archives; exclusive multimedia, including audio and photo essays and video; TimesFile, a tool that will help users organize articles; and Ahead of The Times, which will allow subscribers to take an early look at articles that will appear in The New York Times Magazine, and the newspaper's Travel, Sunday Arts and Real Estate sections.
Martha Goldstein, a spokeswoman for The Los Angeles Times, said the paper still might charge for certain portions of its site.
Caroline Little, publisher of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, the online media subsidiary of the Washington Post Company, said a fee is "something we're looking at very carefully," but added, "there haven't really been a lot of successful ventures."
The Wall Street Journal, which is the only national paper to charge for all of its online content,
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
You can go anywhere on the web to find opinions on most any issue, nearly all of them freely accessible. Instapundit on the right, Daily Kos on the left, and million smaller sites in between.
In a web that's overflowing with opinions and analysis, much of it well-written, the NY Times thinks people will pay $50 a year to read theirs? What are they smoking?
Here is what will happen after the Times initiates its plan. Some corporate customers who already pull archived articles off will sign up for this $50 program and find they also have access to the Op-Ed page. Whoopdedoo!
But my bet is like four people in the US will pay the $50 a month for the sake of accessing the Times' Op-Ed section. If you can't sell the news online, you definitely can't sell opinions. And keep in mind that a huge portion of the Times' readership now comes from web surfers. What this means is that the Times has just voluntarily traded away much of its enormous political influence for maybe $200 a year. Amazing.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
The blogosphere is the next great playground in the marketplace of ideas; it's the closest thing to our forgotten history of town-hall meetings and individual participation that most of us have ever experienced. It's participatory mass media, a totally new thing that is remaking the political landscape -- not least by revealing whole new ways for major political organizations to form themselves and raise funds.
And the NYT has just opted out of the whole thing. That shiny new FUTURE thing? That's scary. We don't know how to make money off of it. So we'll give all that business to our competitors like the LA Times (which tried a similar stupid scheme and quickly recanted).
While registration does bug people many of us will deal with it (if only by using bugmenot) in order to discuss the ideas behind the firewall. Salon seems to be doing OK with ad-based day passes. But fifty bucks a year for the content of one paper based fifteen hundred miles away from where I live? What if all the other newspapers of interest started charging a similar amount? No thanks, guys. As Atrios said, we have too much to sort through as it is. We can get along without the NYT's columnists.
But how will the NYT get along without the buzz of bloggers discussing their content? I guess the answer is "like a local paper." If that's what they want to be, I guess someone else will step up to be the Newspaper of Record.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
I emailed the new York Times in response to this decision of theirs. Here is their reply:
Thank you for contacting New York Times On The Web.
We appreciate your feedback.
We remain committed to providing the majority of the content from The New York Times on the Web to our readers at no cost,
including our Editorials, Letters to the Editor and core news coverage.
However, it is becoming increasingly important to develop additional, sustainable revenue models to support our online business operations.
The details surrounding TimesSelect will be finalized over the next few months.
However, we will share your comments with our colleagues.
Regards,
Jason Fairchild,
The New York Times on the Web
Customer Service
www.nytimes.com/help
But what will happened to slashdot!? It won't have a source to point to every news article!
...when you have people ready to post the content on Slashdot!
"Hey guys...no need to log in! Here's the article text!"
NYTimes.com to Offer Subscription Service
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
Published: May 17, 2005
The New York Times announced yesterday that it would offer a new subscription-based service on its Web site...
Actually, the point of this post was only to joke about posters who regularly save many Slashdot users the hassle of creating a login for the NYT Online. And up until now, I suppose there's been no problem with it, since the material is available for free (sans the time it takes to create a login account).
But I worry a bit about this move after thinking about some dubious virtues often shown in posts by slashdotters. Stealing article text seems to be a favorite pastime for at least a few posters, but when content is copyrighted AND no longer free, what happens when someone posts it (for a joke / for mod point / for ) on Slashdot, will NYT actually respond with any of those lovely cease and decist letters?
Is she really worth a dollar a week? Because I get *my* snide female urban sophisticate dosage for *free* via wonkette (even though it's not always Ana Marie Cox). Besides, Dowd jumped the shark in approx 1999 IMHO.
The first time I read her op-eds online, I was drawn by her redhead thumbnail picture on the page. I kept expecting her to look, well...hotter. You know, hotter*.
Then I noticed her opinions and read often.
*Yes I have noticed her new blonde skinny look. I too am somewhat disappointed.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
The blogosphere is the biggest fraud in the world. Oh no the blogosphere will not link NYT articles because of their registration. I guess the NYT will go down in flames right? Pffft.... first of bloggers don't read real journalism because they are so full of themselves they only read each other blogs. It's sort of like the blind following the blind.
Believe me the NYT will still be around even after blogs have come and gone.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
Seems like quite a gamble. They're spending real money on digging up and writing real stories, and then giving that away. Now they're going to hope what is their real value, the thing we'll pay for, is not all that news they made but rather "opinions" (when the Big Bang of the Blogoverse is only microseconds ago and the entire Universe is composed, to round numbers, exclusively of blogs--not exactly the world's most scarce commodity) and "old news" (again, to round numbers, "everything else left on the net"--Google and its ilk are quite well able to access old news). Well, let's just say, it wouldn't have been my first guess about a strategy. I might even sign up, mind you. But it still seems ... uninspired.
What's really sad to me about this is that it's just "more of same". With the world kneedeep in computers, RSS feeds popping up all over, e-business continuing to claim it's going to spring out all over the place, etc. you'd think their big plan for something to charge for could be, I dunno, ... active. Or even... interactive. Something that does something, not just something that, well, sits there.
But that's just my opinion--one of many out here in the unpaid area... nothing of consequence.
Hmm, thinking on it, that's probably the biggest thing they'll lose. By hiding behind a wall, they may kid themselves into thinking that the real value is happening inside. In that regard, I'd almost feel better if they were pay-only all the way through, not just paying for their own opinions. Because if those opinions drive the paper, they're walling themselves off from good ideas that might otherwise keep them going...
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
I must commend you as well.
Thank you for bringing a shitflood back to Slashdot. It's been months since I've seen anybody do any reasonably worthwhile trolling.
In order to explain to potential customers why they should register and pay for their content, they have placed the article as a registration required article.
Way to go NYT!
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
May 17, 2005
NYTimes.com to Offer Subscription Service
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
The New York Times announced yesterday that it would offer a new subscription-based service on its Web site, charging users an annual fee to read its Op-Ed and news columnists, as the newspaper seeks ways to capitalize on the site's popularity.
Most material on the Web site, NYTimes.com, will remain free to users, The Times said, but columnists from The Times and The International Herald Tribune will be available only to users who sign up for TimesSelect, which will cost $49.95 a year. The service will also include access to The Times's online archives, as well as other features.
The service, which is scheduled to start in September, will be provided free to home-delivery subscribers of the newspaper.
A decision by The Times about charging users for portions of its Web site had been expected for months in the media industry. While some efforts by other newspapers to charge for content online have worked, others have been withdrawn, including most recently one by The Los Angeles Times, which decided last week to stop charging users a fee for its online entertainment listings, reviews and criticism.
Though advertising on Web sites accounts for only 2 to 3 percent of the revenues of most newspapers, it is the fastest-growing source of revenue. Still, many newspaper Web sites fear that charging money for Internet content may send readers to free sites, with advertisers following close behind.
The New York Times's decision to charge a fee came after about a year of study, said Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of the Times Company and publisher of the newspaper.
Mr. Sulzberger said that while some Internet users accustomed to free content might not be willing to pay, many others would be attracted by the online package of columnists, archives and other material.
"The advertising growth on the Web has been just spectacular the last few years," he said. "But like any business, it's going to mature over time, and when that happens, it will flatten and then you'll get into the normal cycles just like we do it on print. And at that point you're really going to need to have another revenue model."
He added, "This is going to help sustain the quality of the information that we make available."
Alexia S. Quadrani, a senior managing director at Bear, Stearns who follows the publishing and advertising industries, said The Times's plan made sense as a business model.
"All newspapers are looking for new advertising revenue and The New York Times realizes they have high-quality content and are looking at other ways to capitalize on it," she said. "The key is to that you want to maximize the dollars you get on the Internet without alienating the people."
In April, The Times's Web site had 1.7 million unique daily visitors. Its daily newspaper circulation in March 2005, the most recent month available, was 1,136,433.
The Times already charges for some content, including its crossword puzzle, news alerts and online archive. Articles are free for seven days after publication; a fee is charged once they are archived.
TimesSelect will also provide subscribers access to TimesPast, the paper's archives; exclusive multimedia, including audio and photo essays and video; TimesFile, a tool that will help users organize articles; and Ahead of The Times, which will allow subscribers to take an early look at articles that will appear in The New York Times Magazine, and the newspaper's Travel, Sunday Arts and Real Estate sections.
Martha Goldstein, a spokeswoman for The Los Angeles Times, said the paper still might charge for certain portions of its site.
Caroline Little, publisher of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, the online media subsidiary of the Washington Post Company, said a fee is "something we're looking at very carefully," but added, "there haven't really been a lot of successful ventures."
The Wall Street Journal, which is the
.... you'll have access to it...for free
There is more political commentary on the Web than anyone has time to read. It is the height of arrogance for them to think their editorial page is so important that they can do what no one else can afford to. I read the NYT op-ed every day, but I'm certainly not going to pay for the privilege of reading Thomas L. Friedman phone it in.
Their news reporting is another matter. There aren't many organizations in the world with the resources to rival the NYT's reporting. But this is what they plan to give away! Stupid stupid stupid.
They should do what Salon is doing: Offer a day pass to anyone willing to watch a 30-second ad. Sell an ad-free, year subscription for, I guess, $50. In addition, continue to charge a premium for access to the archives (which Salon doesn't do, but Salon's archives aren't quite as valuable as those of the NY Times...)
But of course they can't go with someone else's proven business model, because they're the NY Times and they're smarter than everybody else! Bunch of wankers. Can't wait to see them crash and burn, then hopefully learn from experience. God knows they've got enough cash sitting around for a failed experiment or two.
http://www.wikinews.org/
Sits somewhere between NYT and the blogosphere...
...so many slashdotters and bloggers insist on linking to stories there even though there are usually twelve free, no-login sources for them at any given moment.
How interesting you say that your comment exceeds three paragraphs. You are aware that a paragraph consists of more than one sentence? The bare minimum for a proper paragraph is three sentences, something I see you have failed to understand. In this case, I think that it's the content and not the style that stops people from reading your comment.
HTH.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
NY Times Op-Ed Page Goes Subscriber-Only
Great. It will be that much easier to ignore. The paper has gone downhill in the past 10 years enormously. Ever since William Safire left there has been little reason to read the OpEd at all. It is mostly become a collection of liberal left twaddle.
an ill wind that blows no good
It's not the opinions, which aren't all that different from anyone else's. It's the manner in which they're expressed: gramatically correct English, no misspellings, precise organization & structure, etc.
For every thoughtful Slashdot comment, there are probably one hundred that are flawed in one way or another. Two thirds resemble the incoherent babble of George Bush in the first presidential debate.
The NYTimes separates the wheat from the chaff and that's what people will be paying for.
Sure, the NYT will be around. They will probably be New York's Newspaper of Record for a long time. But don't think the blogging phenomenon is going away anytime soon. It is developing galactic centers and niches and a whole structure which promises to be quite stable. I can easily see a future in which most people depend on bloggers to filter their news. If I find someone who has the time to read voraciously and whose links I find interesting, he gets bookmarked. And if he doesn't link the NYT any more, I sure ain't gonna pony up 50 bucks for access to their wares.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
It's really a silly word.
How about "reality"?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
He's worth a buck a week easy.
That seems to work for them.
I, for one, appreciate the opinion of the NYT staff writers; I don't always agree with them, but they are generally knowledgeable and critical of important issues. Their views are filtered by professional editors that try to afford some balance and accountability. In addition, NYT occasionally have Op-Ed pieces from political figures. Blogs may or may not have those qualities on a consistent basis.
That means we'll eventually stop seeing NYT articles on the front page of ./
Reality is subjective, meatspace is just a part of it.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
"Stop chiropracting!"
"Only if you agree to see the irony!"
...is that some people actually pay for Slashdot. *shudders*
Does anyone else see the irony in the fact that you need to register to see their explanation of why you need to subscribe?
I sense.... that their readership will drop...
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
I guess there is no way to mod up an ignore - a no-reply or, as other people might put it, mental hygiene?
--
No, I'm really serious. It might actually be implemented. Do we need it? - which is not identical to us wanting it.
You can't install an ad-blocker in your head in meatspace
I don't see any ads when I'm wearing my tin-foil sunglasses.
My other first post is car post.
now I'll have to pay to hear where Chalabi says WMD are! oh no!
-pyrrho
I wouldn't wipe my ass with the paper version of the NYT. I hope the Grey Whore goes bankrupt.
I have been an on-line Op-Ed NYTimes reader for many years now. The pieces represent the full political spectrum from the left (Krugman) to the right (Brooks). The pieces are very well written and highly intelligent. Unfortunately, $50/year is kind of steep for my budget, so I will deeply miss this source of information.
However, I understand their reason for targeting the Op-Ed pieces. They are usually the "Most E-Mailed Articles". Over the last 7 days, for example, Op-Ed articles were 11 out of the 25 most e-mailed articles.
The Wall Street Journal, which requires a paid subscription (worth every penny, by the way, as will the NY Times subscription also surely be), has essentially removed itself from Google's index. Now I realize that the NYT already requires registration, but the effect of these attempts to monetize access is to partition the knowledge on the Internet into many small fortresses.
Wouldn't it be great if every article published in the NY Times for the past 150 years were indexed in Google? There would be a thousand really interesting uses coming out of the woodwork, uses that we can't even imagine without trying it.
Yes, I know, they need to make a living, but please, let this information be free. If the searcher/finder of record (Google) is barred at the gate from the paper of record, we're losing something really valuable.
I used to be a newspaperman, and now I fight for free speech on the Internet. I wish we could find a way to honor both of these tremendously valuable traditions.
I read the NYT everyday. They aren't perfect by any means. But, they have more in-depth coverage than anyone else and the quality of their writing is well above other papers. I also trust their information a lot more than Bloggy McBlogster's Blog-o-rama.
.
For an example: compare any review on Aint-it-cool-news to any one on the NYT. Which one is more informative and accurate? Which one *doesn't* talk about how they unconditionally love everything done by
Long term, cutting that off (because only a very small fraction will bother to subscribe) is in my view going to cost the paper more in reputation that it'll gain in short-term revenue.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Slashdot unfortunately results not in the sum total of everyone's wisdom but instead everyone's collective stupidity.
I can only imagine that a collectively edited newspaper/site will result in something with about as much credibility as the DemocraticUnderground.org.
Christ, I am a Democrat and I realize those people are nuts.
Really you don't want to read Dowd go on about how we should increase fertility technology so that we can elimitate men from the race?
Why that isn't hate speech I'll never understand. Well, hypocracy. Even some of her international papers thought it was too bigoted to publish.
They're a good paper and their op-ed is top-notch.
You can go over to the Daily Kos or Democratic Underground and read the same overwrought drivel that MoDo spews.
The industry won't die. People want news. Smart people want real news. Smart people are not content to get their information from secondhand blogs written by bored teenagers that simply rehash their own non-reporting. Smart people are not content to get their news from only Reuters and the Associated Press. Newspapers and real reporting will always have a demand, even if it's only the smart people demanding it (sorry, there are a lot of us left).
Please post your columns elsewhere. Thanks!
Lets take an Ad based media business in meatspace, and try to move it to cyberspace, (I hate that word) but heres the kicker, instead of being and ad based cash flow, lets be subscription based.
The dead-tree version of the NYT, or any other major newspaper, is not solely ad-based. Either a single copy, or a delivery subscription, must be purchased. You then must sift through all the ads embedded in the display matrix, otherwise known as paper.
From TFA:
The service will be provided free to home-delivery subscribers of the newspaper.
...
advertising on Web sites accounts for only 2 to 3 percent of the revenues of most newspapers
...
Articles are free for seven days after publication; a fee is charged once they are archived.
I'd take Fox over most random blogger wankfest sites, but your point is well taken.
There will soon come a point when people realize the value of good writing, and that such cannot generally be found for free on the Internet. Well read papers such as NYT WSJ and the Economist will always command a loyal, paying audience because of the significance and quality of their work.
Unfortunately, the battle for profitability is made difficult by posers such the ones elsewhere in this thread who miss the message completely to complain about paragraph length and elitism instead.
There are 1.1... kinds of people.
Paying a few cents for good content is much better than having everything driven and distorted by advertising. Microtransactions can drive creativity and are the best hope for sustainable free speech.
Until they come around, I can settle for subscriptions.
mt
...are right on the money. I don't know how many times I've been reading David Pogue's technology column, when suddenly he'll launch into a 2 page diatribe about how the grinding gears of capitalism have produced another 6 megapixel camera only by exploiting the weak proletariat masses, but one day the oppressed will rise up and over throw the cultural hegemony of white male software.
Oh wait, I do know how many times I've read that: Zero.
Seriously though, I think all this crap about how "liberal" the Times is is basically meaningless. It's a big paper, and each writer and editor have their own view of the world. To take an example, before the Iraq War, Judith Miller kept "leaking" information about Saddam's enormous arsenal of WMD and the intricate ways in which the Pentagon was planning on destroying them. I know that Thomas Friedman and David Brooks gave tentative approval to Bush's decision to invade (don't remember about some of the other conservatives though). On the other hand, Bush was caught on the mic saying that reporter Adam Clymer is "an asshole" during the 2000 campaign.
Each reporter is a different person, and each story is a different story. By saying "the New York Times is liberal," you take something that's really complex and flatten it to a single dimension without gaining any insight into the real interworkings of it.
With the shortage of things to read on the Internet we will have no other choice than to shell out $50 for this "service".
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
It doesn't matter if MEMRI is staffed by aliens from Saturn.
Or are you trying to say what MEMRI posts isn't true? That the videos they show of imams inciting violence are falsified?
I'm going to miss my Krugman dosages. Where else am i supposed to get my economics candies?
Myren
Yeah, plus it's not as though you can't find opinions for free on the internet.
Find me a guide to writing style that says that. Cite your source, and I might change my opinion.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I guess someone else will step up to be the Newspaper of Record. Yes, maybe Newsweek could put something together to fill the void.
Maybe they could even hire Jason Blair to head things up.
Slashdot - Where the slash is most definitely to the left.
The world has changed, and the Times' response is 180 degrees wrong.
The Times has traditionally had two important features: it's the newspaper of record (i.e. you can cite its past issues as basically true,) and good op-ed pieces.
So, the Times thinks to itself and decides to charge for its strengths (their old news already costs money, and now they want to charge for the op-ed stuff.) The result is predictable: the Times is losing its newpaper of record status because you can't check old articles on the web, and now it's losing its pundit status because you can't read their (ever more shrill) op-ed authors.
A truly brilliant strategy for becoming unimportant!
The common sense approach would have defended these positions by a) providing the modern equivalent of microfiche for all old articles, thus maintaining their status of paper of record, and b) charging for current (1 day or week news.) c) Give the op-ed page away for free - it encourages readers to actually subscribe to the current news (because the pundits reference current events.)
So we're going to have to go to #xxxl337h4ck channels on IRC for cracked passes now to get the world's daily gist?
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Egad! Someone presents plausable arguments that run counter to the groupthink, and is supported by someone else with other arguments!
Non-free things have value, too.
Christ, I am a Democrat and I realize those people are nuts.
You admit you have a problem (political affiliation with nutjobs), and you acknowledge a higher power (Christ). That's steps 1 and 2 right there. The next step is to make the decision to submit to this higher power, which will likely lead to turning your life around.
Do you want to pay for real research and in-depth articles? probably not. Unfortunately, some of us are not students with resources to unlimited free research underwritten by alumni and other donations. You guys need to grow up and realize that people are doing this for their profession. How would you like to try to earn 100% of your income through banner ads? And not be a porn site.
Oh, that's right. You still live in your parent's basement where your parents take care of all your bills and everything is FREE to you. Grow up. People need to make money in order to have things like food and housing.
The NYTimes going to a paid subscription makes sense. Their op-eds are worth it, even the idiots I disagree with. I value the research done by the op-ed writers. It takes time and effort, and frequently travel, to find out the information they have. They get accolades because of the work put into their opinions and the knowledge behind it. They have opinions backed up by more than pure partisan vitriol, which is what 99% of all blogs have.
Show me ONE instance of a blog which has put more effort and RESEARCH into its daily feed than the NY Times op-ed page. I dare 'ya. The blogs are insteresting. They are funny. They do NOT DO ORIGINAL RESEARCH.
You're confusing Friedman the op-ed guy with Friedman the author.
Most of the columnists there aren't worth reading. Herbert, Dowd, Krugman, et al are washed up hacks who's only job is preaching to the choir.
How bad are they? They're so bad that their guest op-ed columnist last summer blew them all away by showing writing that was well-thought, intelligent, and cogent. He tried to convince you instead of falling back into beating-the-drum cliches.
That was Henry Louis Gates, Jr (no relation). Wow, what a writer he was. He really made them all look bad, which is probably why he wasn't invited back.
I mean, who the heck would pay for Bob "voter intimidation" Herbert?
Most of the articles on the Times and other big papers are not written by them, look at the by line of your paper and almost every article will say Rueters, or AP, or have another newspapers name, why because its cheaper. The exception is the WSJ check outs its by lines almost all staff writers. Their content is valubale and expensive to produce, but to some its worth it.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
It seems pretty clear the moderators are moding down anyone who defends the NY times. All we seem to have are people saying "nytimes who gives a flip" and then when someone who reads it comments cleverly on the infantile level of discourse they get modded as flame bait.
Mod the discussion not your opinion. mod up more often than you mod down.
You can use their RSS feeds without registration. Also you can go to http://nytimes.blogspace.com/genlink and paste a link to a NYT page to get a version that doesn't require a login.
1 7times.html?ex=1273982400&en=0b9bad06a1930877&ei=5 090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
Here's the article mentioned above that doesn't require registration:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/17/business/media/
I read the NYT everyday.
.
I would expect you to read it, dumbass. "Everyday" is an adjective. What you meant to say was "every day".
Which one *doesn't* talk about how they unconditionally love everything done by
What kind of sentence was that? Done by what?
Yes, it seems that you do qualify as an average NYT reader. You are part of their target audience, ignorant and uneducated.
Does it also list tommorrows stock market stats today? It might be worth it.
"A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.'" - DNA
Sign me up, Scooter! WTF is the diference between the NY Times Op-Ed page and the front page?
My wife doesn't listen to me either...
The columnists are ok, but I wouldn't pay $50 for them. Probably any amount wouldn't be worth the trouble. If they want to charge money, they should differentiate between reduced content vs. full content. Anyone who wants headline news can go most anywhere, but the NYT has a lot of good in-depth stories and analysis. There is a lot less competition there.
Maybe so, but I'm old fashioned. Style guides like "The Elements of Style" by William Strunk state that:
"As a rule, single sentences should not be written or printed as paragraphs. An exception may be made of sentences of transition, indicating the relation between the parts of an exposition or argument."
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
The NYT has just cut itself off from the biggest source of international exposure it has.
I doubt if many people outside the US go to the NYT webpage or editorial.
OTOH, NYT editorials, are syndicated by many foreign
newspapers & I would assume that, that is it's biggest source of International Exposure & also the International Herald Tribune.
no, they're modding down illiterate morons. Which is fair enough by me - I shouldn't have to be exposed to that sort of crap.
We're supposed to be intelligent people here.
I bet other newspapers eventually start following their lead, which would be unfortunate. Luckily there are some efforts to create community-based news sites like www.wikinews.org.
and at $19.99 per month they could still make a profit off of AND deliver "all the news fit to bites"
-- Mitch
Manzellanews.com
Yes, I agree, and I don't get it. The NY Times has its flaws, but compared to most news media, it's extremely good, and there's no denying its influence.
People need to make money in order to have things like food and housing.
Theodore Kaczynski lived 'off the grid' and supported himself without the use of money for some 18 years while the USA government spent millions trying to apprehend him. He would have remained at large had his brother not read this and reluctantly(?) decided to 'turn him in'.
Fine. Just go live in a big national park like Yellowstone. Live off the land for as long as you can before the park rangers find you and kick you out. Apparently, all the 'decent' land in the USA has already been developed or is owned by major corporations or extremely wealthy people. Thus, in the USA except for the oil rich, Artic wasteland that is Alaska, it is nigh impossible to 'live off the land' and provide for yourself without the need/use for money.
In the USA, the Mecca of Capitalism, only one issue is paramount:
Money talks!...Nothing else matters!
By the way, it's not like there is lack of opinions available for free from bloggers of your choice :)
WHO CARES!!!!!!!!!! ReallY?I think those that write for the opion piece should have to pay. r
I've always liked three sentence paragraphs in formal writing because I find that when I formulate an argument my sentences tend to be related, and funnily enough I find that a minimum of three sentences is required to effectively get my point across.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Point taken.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
In related news, The Economist has adopted the earn a day pass for premium content idea popularized by Salon.com. I wonder which publication has the best economists?
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
Martin Nisenholtz, CEO of NYT Digital, has bet $1000 that in 2007 the NYT webpage will still be beating blogs.
... well, they have to! We're the New York Times!
Regardless of what you think about this, go read his argument: he goes on for quite some time about "the weblog phenomonon", the NYT's 100+ year history, the First Amendment, "authoritative coverage", and so on. Not once does he mention Google! Um, that was kind of an important part of the bet, Martin.
Earlier, when they went registration-only, they lost a lot of potential readers, and maintained their Google juice only by adding a workaround with Google so registration-hidden pages could still be indexed. They've always tried to hide their stuff behind some curtain or other: now it's with subscriber-only pages. How much traffic will they lose, vs. how much in subscription money do they gain? (Maybe they think they can make more off subscriptions than ads.)
From NYT's POV, there is no "public". They're the friggin' New York Times, and people will flock to them. And if they don't
It is revenue, but for 50 bucks, I'd rather spend three hundred and get the whole damn paper and not just one page, even if I actually have to (gasp) read a paper product. And what up with using the old subscription model? I kinda hoped the old gray lady would have something more original in her. Cripes, how about pay-per view for columnists? You could dump a bunch of losers if nobody paid for their miserable opinions. There are columnists (most work for WSJ)that I'd happily "pay-per-view". Give me the chance!
This is also interesting for another reason: It sends the signal that they think their opinion is more important than their new reporting. What ever happened to "facts are sacred"?
I'm sure the NYT was a real shark in the days when they only had to compete for attention among other papers. But the rules have changed, and making it harder to get at their content is exactly the wrong move at the wrong time.
it's become the de facto US outpost of the global web media (in the same way that The Guardian is in the UK)
The Guardian is a heavily left leaning broadsheet enjoyed by what some would deem to be 'the liberal elite' in the UK, it has no credentials of 'de facto' anything. It's just a left leaning broadsheet aimed at left wing intellectuals and is certainely not representative of the 'people' of the UK. Because it is well understood to be left-leaning, it's articles always represent that POV, therefore it could never be regarded as a de facto outpost of global web media.
To some extent one might argue the BBC would be a better candidate for such a title, but even then it has it's own slant and views on things which would make regarding it as such foolish.
The whole point of a global media network, is that there is no one defacto hub, it is a collection of different outlets with different POVs and audiences to satisfy.
How can they be greedy keeping what's theres to begin with? If I don't share my car with you, does that make me greedy?
Don't you know Googlezon made them obsolete?
Oh, wait. Not yet.
Everything I need to know about copyrights I learned from Slashdot.
Some how it seems strange. I'm more than happy to pay for a printed newspaper/magazine. But not for an online one. Why is this?
There are four sorts of people in the world: fools, lunatics, idiots and morons. - Umberto Eco, Foucaut's pendulum.
There will come a time when these greedy b*st*rds will require that any library -- including the Library of Congress (shoot me, I'm just an American) -- will be required to pay fees daily to archive their drivel. There are few more biased sources of "journalism". Let their editorials rot in the ground, just as their policy makers will.
When they actually rise to the stature of journalism, it is possible that their editorials may be worth reading. Until then, "hasta la vista, baby!"
RHCE; are you certified? Karma: ambiguous.
Yeah, the dude about two posts above yours.
/. but you can still try.
Try fucking reading for a change. I know this is
As companies find that they can't be profitable (enough) with real journalism, they'll stop doing real journalism.
You can drop the future tense here. To reduce costs, radio and TV channels are increasingly airing prepackaged news produced by the government. Of course, most of the time, they don't mention the origin of the news and make it appear as if they were independently produced and checked.
Economic pressures are pushing away from what it takes to make a good news source. In a competitive market, customers use the products they like most. Problem is that good news (ie truth) are not especially pleasant ; and can be quite unpleasant (when they prove you wrong). Also fact finding and checking is *very* expensive. All in all, papers willing to provide real news suffer a competitive disavantage against those who push cheap, sugar-coated content. The best example is the astounding coverage of Michael Jackson's trial. It's a perfect topic, business-wise. Content is incredibly cheap to produce (an anchor and a couple of *experts* arguing in a studio) and everybody loves a paedophilia trial involving a celebrity.
At the end of the day, serious news sources have a choice : stop doing actual news or die. None is good for democracy. This is one of the rare cases where free markets do not drive the public good. I realize that for many Americans, suggesting that this is possible at all verges on heresy. Yet, the merger of news and entertainment is a real issue that must be addressed.
It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.
Will charging money improve the quality of NYT editorials? I mean, several columnists are so unoriginal that they never deviate from their formulas. I can pretty much guess what Frank Rich, Paul Krugman, Moreen Dowd, and Bob Herbert will say without reading them. Kristoff and Brooks are fairly interesting, and Friedman has some occasionally interesting writing. Can we buy these a la carte? The NYT ought to try that, and see which columnists are interesting to readers. This idea of people subscribing to a liberal propoganda feed will be interesting to watch, particularly because so many web sites give away liberal opinions for free. I don't see the demand. The WSJ has the catbird seat, because they sell subscriptions (of real, useful news) to people who spend other people's money.
Le Monde (surely the European equivalant of the NYTimes) changed significantly a few weeks ago. The "free" website (www.lemonde.fr) is much smaller than it once was, and gone are my favorites such as the book review (previously downloadable as a PDF, no ads, otherwise identical to printed copy). Various on-line subscriptions are now available. Liberation (www.liberation.fr) and Le Figaro (www.lefigaro.fr) don't appear to have changed (yet).
I doubt if many people outside the US go to the NYT webpage or editorial.
I don't know how you can possibly say this. Speaking as a Brit I regularly read the NYT on the web and read the op-ed pages that will now be denied to me. I'm really surprised at this decision, since it will probably not generate much money, but will cut off a lot of interest abroad.
If you compare this with the Guardian, they are conciously appealing via the web to a global progressive audience for news, and I'd have thought that was a better model for the NYT as well. Lame.
catch (ModDownException mde) {post.modUp("Interesting")}
You mean, unless I pay, I'll miss out on the NYT's insightful *cough* balanced *cough cough* and savvy *a-a-a-achoo* editorials? Makes me feel sick...
What this says is that the Times, and I suspect, most other newspapers realize that they are in the same business as TV and as such, their prattling ideological talking head agitprop is more valuable as a commodity than the actual news. This is a very sound business decision.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I hope they do this to the whole paper. Not that I'd ever read their false articles anyway....
Oh no I'll have to pay for it? I don't think so.
Get up!
I can't say as I was particularly surprised to see all of the people complaining that the NYT is dumb and will kill their influence by diminishing their circulation, but I was rather surprised to see so many of those modded up so that I still caught them filtering on 2+...
Anyway, on reading the NYT article, I found myself thinking I will probably subscribe to it (most likely the first time Krugman has an interesting looking article that I want to read...). The point on the thing is to recognize value that exists. The Times is an excellent news gathering and disseminating organization, but there is not anything particularly unique in that not easily replicated by a billion other sources. My main source of news is my subscription to the Economist, but I scan the times daily along with one or two other papers (picked at semi-random between the Guardian, Times of London, Houston Chronicle, Times of India, Miami Herald, Palm Beach Post, Tallahassee Democrat, St Pete Times, others...).
The Times also assembles some of the best writers and thinkers with whom to people it's Op-Ed page. While the drop off from Safire to Brooks is massive (and to the person complaining about the times not being decent in the last ten years, Safire has only been gone from there for four months or so), David Brooks is pretty much the gold standard in right wing thought, and the Times has him. Krugman has forged himself into the gold standard for the center left. As far as actual business thought, nobody at the WSJ has anything on Floyd Norris or Gretchen Morganson. Furthermore, they did not achieve this stature by publishing online. The print edition of the New York Times is the United States' (and to some extent, the World's) paper of record, and has established itself as such over the past century or more (to recap, the web has been around for ten years in mass media form, and another four years before that in any form). The Times selects the best writers, and gives them the most important forum in which to write. One last value added point about the New York Times, it is the paper in which important figures write to make or defend their point. Springing immediately to mind on that point are Bob Dole writing about the judicial confrontation, Gale Norton shilling for drilling in ANWR, and Kofi Annan every few months about basically anything important to the world.
While I am not thrilled that they are going to start charging, I believe it to be fairly reasonable. As I said above, I will probably subscribe. If you put more than $50 value on reading the most important collection of columnists in the world, you will too (and it may be perfectly reasonable for you to not put more value than that on it).
" studies into quantum cosmology"
Death is too good for you.
I purchase the worst local paper just because the carry the Times daily puzzle.
I just called the Times media person, and this is truly an amazing value. Under this plan, subscribers have access to every article that appeared in the New York Times going back to 1851. Right now, you have to pay $2.95 an article, but after September, every article will be free to subscribers. Companies like Nexis must be flipping out, because they are charging an exorbitant amount of money for access to the Times database. After this plan rolls out, I can't imagine anyone wanting to use Nexis but on an infrequent basis.
Just imagine the applications for school children of all ages, businesses, researchers, et cetera. What a gold mine!
Please. "Newspaper of Record" is not a slogan; all that the phrase "Newspaper of Record" means is that speeches by the President and other important politicians get their full texts published in the next edition after the speech. Before radio and television carried the voices of Presidents to the masses, the only way the people knew what was being said was to read it in the papers; however, in an era when speeches could be hours long, most small town newspapers simply did not have the space to print anything but excerpts.
Only a handful of newspapers in large metropolitan areas could afford to print speeches and political platforms in full. These newspapers became Newspapers of Record because they literally entered the words of the politicians into the public record.
To my knowledge, The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune both still print the full text of Presidential speeches. I don't know how many other cities have newspapers that do this, but I am willing to bet that at least Washington, DC and Los Angeles do.
Good media costs. It costs because you need to get people over to where the news happens so they can see what's going on; it costs because if you're using local people, you need to figure out how they get the news back to you. It costs because, well, running a large organization costs money.
I agree, but infortunately, I think the implication is that good media -- with the kind of background checking and journalistic standards we expect from a newspaper like the Gray Lady -- may not be a viable commercial product in the long term.
This shouldn't happen according to classical economic theory. When we plunk a couple of quarters on the newsstand counter to grab a paper on the way to work, we're in theory paying for that information, and should be willing to go for a package that gets us that information for less on a long term basis. Of course marketers have a much more complex and nuanced view of human economic behavior that encompasses both the irrational aspects of our behavior, and the rational but psychologically complex ones.
An example of our irrationality is that our perceptions of cost are non-linear with respect to the size of individual outlays. If Starbucks sold coffee subscriptions for $500 a year, very few people would buy, although it is common enough for people to plunk down $3 a day, five days a week for 50 weeks a year, totalling $750.
My local paper has recognized this, after a fashion, and has a curious deal: $16.50 for four weeks. Why four weeks? Who subscribes to anything for foru weeks? Simple: Add another week and you're north of $20. Less than $20 is perceived as a negligible outlay by a lot of people, who simply don't pay that much attention to what they're actually getting. I bet they could get 80% of the subscribers at $20/month that they would for $20/year. However, even that's not enough when people can get AP stories from Yahoo or Google or web logs. Even if these information sources aren't as useful as my local paper or a journalistic powerhouse like the Times.
Furthermore, it's a mistake to think the only thing people buy when they get the paper is the information contained in it. I may enjoy of exchanging pleasantries with the oddball character who runs the newsstand; maybe I go there otherwise to buy a coffee or a pack of gum. I may like certain aspects of the physical medium, such as the ability to not look at my fellow commuters on the train, or the ritual of divvying up the paper with my spouse. It may keep my mind occupied while I sit on the john.
So, in the end, I don't see electronic subscriptions to be a strong business model. The size of each cash outlay is too high to fit into the daily routine. Electronic editions don't fit as flexibly into our lives as newsprint editions. I can get free information after a fashion from sources like Yahoo or even weblogs, which while less valuable in an information sense, takes better advantage of consumer impulsiveness.
I've commented on other stories about the need for a micropayment system, possibly treasury backed, that reproduces pocket change's universal acceptance, low transaction costs, convenience, anonymity and low risk. This idea has been around for some time, but the most widely accepted micropayment system out there fails on all counts, and we aren't going to see a better alternative any time soon. This means the newspaper business model is doomed.
If newspapers are going to survive need some business leaders who understand consumer behavior. Newspapers were once institutions more than they were businesses. Now they opposite is true; they are more media businesses than they are social institutions. The result is a that society increasingly gets "information" from sources that are actually peddling entertainment. You know who I mean. Burger journalism. An information diet high in white flour sentiment and fatty red meat fear and jingoism is more entertaining than a balanced information diet full chock full of vitaminy
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
When he does, the prevalence of American Idol and their ilk actually become tolerable (by comparison to the rest of the content. :-)
... What drek! (Like Bruce Springstein sang: "97 channels and nothing's on" [The number is probably wrong. I just gave it a nodding awareness, not an actual listen to the song.])
Since I stated to study media again, I channel-hop for a while every night.
Yeech
PBS can actually hold my attention sometimes but I usually end up back on my computer.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Right. My take on this is that they want to squeeze money from the few who care what the NYT thinks (i.e. politicians and CEOs), and use that money to subsidize keeping the actual news free for everyone else.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Then the newspapers create the NPAA (News Paper Association of America); and start suing their readers.
Mark my words....
--
Registered .sig quotient : 1337
The NTTimes should not have the right to profit from the media attention that has been put on them. An article they published was responsible for riots and murders, still they use the event to make some more money from online sales.
Windows Vista Help Forum
your reply was less than three sentences. care to finish the point or did I just trip over irony.
The entire 'news media' is a farce anyway.
Cant believe anything they say in the first place.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Topics of the Times ("New York Times," 13 January, 1920, p. 12, col. 5)
A Severe Strain on Credulity
As a method of sending a missile to the higher, and even highest, part of the earth's atmospheric envelope, Professor Goddard's multiple-charge rocket is a practicable, and therefore promising device. Such a rocket, too, might carry self-recording instruments, to be released at the limit of its flight, and conceivable parachutes would bring them safely to the ground. It is not obvious, however, that the instruments would return to the point of departure; indeed, it is obvious that they would not, for parachutes drift exactly as balloons do. And the rocket, or what was left of it after the last explosion, would have to be aimed with amazing skill, and in dead calm, to fall on the spot where it started.
But that is a slight inconvenience, at least from the scientific standpoint, though it might be serious enough from that of the always innocent bystander a few hundred or thousand yards away from the firing line. It is when one considers the multiple- charge rocket as a traveler to the moon that one begins to doubt and looks again, to see if the dispatch announcing the professor's purposes and hopes says that he is working under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution. It does say so, and therefore the impulse to do more than doubt the practicability of such a device for such a purpose must be--well, controlled. Still, to be filled with uneasy wonder and express it will be safe enough, for after the rocket quits our air and and really starts on its longer journey, its flight would be neither accelerated nor maintained by the explosion of the charges it then might have left. To claim that it would be is to deny a fundamental law of dynamics, and only Dr. Einstein and his chosen dozen, so few and fit, are licensed to do that.
His Plan Is Not Original
That Professor Goddard, with his "chair" in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react--to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
But there are such things as intentional mistakes or oversights, and, as it happens, Jules Verne, who also knew a thing or two in assorted sciences--and had, besides, a surprising amount of prophetic power--deliberately seems to make the same mistake that Professor Goddard seems to make. For the Frenchman, having got his travelers to or toward the moon into the desperate fix riding a tiny satellite of the satellite, saved them from circling it forever by means of an explosion, rocket fashion, where an explosion would not have had in the slightest degree the effect of releasing them from their dreadful slavery. That was one of Verne's few scientific slips, or else it was a deliberate step aside from scientific accuracy, pardonable enough of him in a romancer, but its like is not so easily explained when made by a savant who isn't writing a novel of adventure.
All the same, if Professor Goddard's rocket attains a sufficient speed before it passes out of our atmosphere--which is a thinkable possibility--and if its aiming takes into account all of the many deflective forces that will affect its flight, it may reach the moon. That the rocket could carry enough explosive to make on impact a flash large and bright enough to be seen from earth by the biggest of our telescope--that will be believed when it is done.
I have no doubt that time will show the current batch of idiots on murderer's row to be even stupider.
So, where are you subjectively located in meat-space, so I can subjectively superposition my aluminum baseball bat repeatedly onto your cranium? After all, you can self-select a different reality when it subjectively occurs (and probably will need to).
Shouldn't have wasted my mod points yesterday. The link in the parent's comment is definitely interesting/insightful and maybe even funny, but not really.
Check it out, and if you have mod points, use them.
It's been months since I've had to sign in...
when I heard what the NYT was doing, I decided to stop buying their paper.
I'll read the ones left in the rotunda by others.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/artic le_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000935914
Goodbye Times, you served your bias well.