Matthew Yglesias doesn't want to pay for the new NYT Select. He writes:
Boy, I'd sort of like to know what Paul Krugman's column on race and Katrina says. But that's not a fifty bucks a year kind of desire to know. If I'm lucky, Krugman will decide he'd better email the text of his articles for free to influential bloggers and the like.
So who are "influential bloggers and the like"? Do they need to influence the mainstream media (or, better yet, work in the mainstream media) in order to count as influential and thus worthy of free NYT access? I ask because I am a blogger who has written for non-self-published things, but whose blog--and self--are by no means famous, yet who is read by plenty of people I do not know personally. Should I be getting free Krugman? Do I want free Krugman, or was my free cappuccino (12 stamps on my coffee card later) good enough? What about people who write blogs that are read only by the person they're currently dating, their ex, and their best friend--do these bloggers get free Krugman? I can't quite see where the line would be drawn, and it strikes me as presumptuous to assume Krugman or the NYT knows who the influential bloggers are, and that these people ought to be getting the NYT Select free while the rest of the online population--the people less likely to otherwise have NYT Select access--get stuck with nothing.
"I ask because I am a blogger who has written for non-self-published things, but whose blog--and self--are by no means famous, yet who is read by plenty of people I do not know personally. Should I be getting free Krugman?"
ReplyDeleteYou obviously need to join the blogger's union.
I'm a member of the blog commenter's union. (We're affiliated with International Brotherhood of Electricians.) And while we haven't been able to negotiate a Times Select benefit, we do get all of our Starbucks purchases at 80% off.
Bloggers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your lack of access to free swag!
Friedman, krugman's columns can be found in other newspapers. Just google the column title and you should be able to find them.
ReplyDeleteThere is a "bootleg" version of Krugman column online. Info and link were on Gawker or Wonkette yesterday so I read the column and sent it to a couple of friends who are fans. -- JM
ReplyDeleteI'm not worried about getting free Krugman. I'm worried about "influential bloggers" and how that would be determined.
ReplyDeleteIf you can figure out the days on which Krugman writes his column, $100 will get you Krguman and the NYT crossword puzzle for those days.
ReplyDeleteWhich is to say, you could just buy the dead-tree NYT on the days Krugman has a column. Of course, if you want Hebert too, you're now in the territory where you should buy TimesSelect.