PressEthic

All I wanted to do was read Maureen Dowd.

Sadly, I learned The New York Times has instituted TimesSelect, a subscription service that now requires $7.95 per month for access to its premiere op-ed pieces - roughly equivalent to what a yearly print subscriber pays per month. Columnists like Dowd, Thomas Friedman and Paul Krugman are now teasing me from the NYT Web site, with only a scant sentence or two and a little orange icon given away gratis.

As The Poynter Institute's Steve Outing points out, the Times isn’t exactly boosting online readership with this idea. If a person only has an interest in, say, Paul Krugman, the $7.95 spent on TimesSelect in a month would be the same as buying the print editions on four Mondays and Fridays - the days Krugman’s columns run.

The New York Observer has gone so far as to keep a running tally of how many now-TimesSelect columns are making the “most e-mailed” list. Shockingly, they’re not getting a lot of play in that respect.

With TimesSelect, readers aren’t being charged for the content of the entire paper - only for what are arguably the most intelligent parts of it.

It kind of takes the democracy out of newspapers.

While overall readership has certainly taken a nosedive, newspapers will never actually die. They’re too accessible. For a $1, anyone with the time and interest can access all the enlightened reporting and commentary The New York Times is so famous for - be it news, sports or arts. Therein lies the problem with TimesSelect; anyone can read the front page, but the real thinkers will cost you.

The Observer called TimesSelect the NYT’s “experiment.” I hope that’s all it is.