Patterico's Pontifications

9/16/2005

TimesSelect: The Money for Lies Scandal

Filed under: Media Bias — Patterico @ 9:53 pm



In three days you’ll have to pay to read Paul Krugman’s lies and Maureen Dowd’s trivial nonsense.

Me, I say no thanks. I can find lies and nonsense aplenty on the Internet — for free.

13 Responses to “TimesSelect: The Money for Lies Scandal”

  1. Don’t you see the distinction between an expensive “intellectual” lie (Krugman, Dowd) and just plain, unsophisticated free lie from a moonbat?

    David (fed249)

  2. How much will it cost to see their corrections?

    jd watson (e27eeb)

  3. I have it even better, I don’t even have to go to the internet. I have friends who will lie to me much more convincingly than Krugman/Dowd and they are free! OK, they’re not free, you have to buy them a drink, but at happy hour prices they’re still cheaper and much more entertaining.

    Lew Clark (0aa1d0)

  4. Not so fast, Lone Rangers. Almost all NYT columnists appear in various local rags and those rags are on the web. We can pick up Dowd’s droolings at the Denver Post to name but one of a hundred sites which I’m sure will be revealed by various bloggers. And Krugman will be quoted in part by all those eager to expose a fraud to a wider audience.

    Howard Veit (baba22)

  5. Re: Lew Clark

    Are you saying there is no free lunch or free lie?

    Or both?

    David (fed249)

  6. To paraphrase Ross Perot: “That big sucking sound you here is the Old Grey Lady’s web relevence.”

    I read somewhere that they think they’ll take an intial hit, but will rebound in six months.

    Yeah, right! I figure a good third of their traffic consists of people going there in order to fisk the latest missives from Kruggie and MoDo. No one is going to pay to belittle them.

    TC@LeatherPenguin (d6a383)

  7. The Times is going to hide thoise buffoons by charging to read them. Nobody will see those columns except lefties.

    Bill Keller (716196)

  8. This should actually be a good move by the Times. No, of course, none of us would spend cash just to laugh at Krugman or Dowd but they’ll get plenty of cash from the Lefties that lap up their crap like milk. It may actually act to insulate the Times from a lot of complaints from the likes of us. They win all around.

    Craig R. Harnon (421a72)

  9. It’s Patterico’s fault, anyway: by his continual coverage of Mr Krugman’s somewhat expansive view of the truth, the Times simply decided that not exposing their columnists to people who might actually check on a fact or two would be the smarter policy.

    But the Times’ move is only the first one. It’s plainly obvious that the newspaper business has got to change: too many people have realized that they can read the stories they want, for free, on the internet, without dealing with a clutter of advertising pages, fingers stained black from newsprint, and a pile of paper to recycle (or, if you’re a good conservative like me, to rot in the landfill).

    Worse still, the people who have the option to read the newspapers online for free are disproportionately wealthier than the population as a whole — which means the very people advertisers want to have most read the newspapers!

    The business has to change. Trouble is, the major newspapers haven’t quite figured out how to change it and stay in business.

    Dana R. Pico (a9eb8b)

  10. It’s Patterico’s fault, anyway: by his continual coverage of Mr Krugman’s somewhat expansive view of the truth, the Times simply decided that not exposing their columnists to people who might actually check on a fact or two would be the smarter policy.

    That’s an amusing comment as long as you’re not serious. I do think The Times will benefit from not providing ready access to the readers of critics like Luskin, Maguire, and myself — but their primary motivation is obviously economic.

    Patterico (4e4b70)

  11. Why wouldn’t it be an amusing comment even if I am serious?

    I agree that the primary motive is economic, and trying to figure out how newspapers can survive the internet, but I also believe that the “main stream media” would love to see us unedumacated bloggers disappear into the obscurity they think we so obviously deserve.

    It seems to me that the MSM has taken far more serious note of the “filegate” scandal than a lot of people have realized. The examples of us guys sitting in our pajamas (not yet having showered) destroying stories in the MSM are growing continually; how many more, the MSM has to be wondering, will it take before the credibility of the NYT or CBS is no higher than that of Pajamahadin?

    Dana R. Pico (ba0b64)

  12. Once again the Times shows its ignorece of basic economics. It is charginging for the things least in demand and giving away its hard news, which is what most folks read the times for. They are marginalizing their columnists which are hard liberals 17 to 1.

    Result: The Krugmans and Dowds will be less read and less quoted. And that’s OK with me.

    Perhaps this is Mr. Sulzberger Jr’s way of keeping them from making bigger fools of themselves and the Times.

    Also, if memory serves me correctly, there was no offer for archive retrieval in the original offer. Now 100 items are accessible for $49.95, a 90% price reduction from the $4.95 per article normally charged. And for this you get Dowd and Krugman with their attack dog specials.

    Sorry no deal!

    Corky Boyd (0a8e6b)

  13. “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

    Subscriptions are in free-fall, ad revenues are down, criticism is mounting, and blogs are beating them to the punch every time, yet the NYT’s response is to raise prices….

    If you are in a hole, it is usually a good idea to stop digging. But, were’re talking about Professional Journalism here folks. And the band played on.

    Black Jack (ee9fe2)


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