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final verdict
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Timesselect
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final verdict
honey, i repeated the anecdote
Why Is Philip Demuth Monger Harassing 'Times' Editors?
Times deputy editor and stylebook guru Philip B. Corbett is the very special host of this week's Talk to the Newsroom feature, and the Q&A has been pretty entertaining if you're a total nerd for grammar and usage. (The Life in Hell-ish "banned" phrase list is pretty great.) It's also been full of questions that the Times has answered before—in one case, quite literally! Also? Now that everyone can read nearly everything the Times has ever printed for free, there's really no reason for people to keep asking the exact same "Mr. Loaf" question. More »
shrink to forget
The 'Times' Has A Shrinking Problem
Yesterday's New York Times opinion piece "Honey, I Shrunk Congress" marked the fifteenth thing shrunk in a Times headline since the release of the classic film Honey, I Shrunk the Kids in 1989. To celebrate, we're taking a look back at all the other things shrunk, meeting some regular shrinkers, and crunching some numbers. Join us, won't you? More »
double-dipping
Thomas Friedman: The Internet Is Too Quiet!
You know what? I'm just not done with today's insanely irritating Thomas Friedman op-ed in the Times. (Ugh, TimesSelect, come back! Untear down this paywall!) Friedman's beef with the do-gooding college children of our age is that they're just all Facebookey. "But Generation Q may be too quiet, too online, for its own good, and for the country's own good." Really? Online equals... quiet? Dude. "Generation Quiet" is one bad little coinage that is so not going to stick around—not in a world where the youngs are so loudly overdisclosing on Facebook walls and opinionating on the blogs. I thought the olds hated the internet exactly because it was so loud?
Generation Q [NYT]
the youngs
Thomas Friedman: What Is Up With The Kids After 9/11?
Globe-trotting taker of conclusions from anecdotes (and New York Times columnist) Thomas Friedman has been to some (four) college campuses! There he has seen that the kids of today are doing the good work, that they travel the world building hospitals abroad and snuggling babies with AIDS and just generally building a wonderful future—"in record numbers," whatever numbers those might be. None of these colleges were in New York, by the way—you selfish, future-hating children of N.Y.U.! This trip comforted him: "One of the things I feared most after 9/11—that my daughters would not be able to travel the world with the same carefree attitude my wife and I did at their age—has not come to pass." You know, funny, that did not even rate on my list of greatest fears after 9/11! Was more worried about the smoke getting in the windows through the wet towels, and the Team America world war that followed, but yeah, carefree attitudes for tourists sounds nice too.
Generation Q [NYT]
the new model
Did The 'New York Times' Lose Money On TimesSelect?
Portfolio econ-blogger Zubin Jelveh makes the case that hiding some Times content behind a paywall for the last two years cost the newspaper growth, and therefore cash. (Unfortunately, and unrelentingly, traffic equals cash. Stay tuned for some naked celebrity pictures later today!) Comparing the Times' web growth to a number of sort-of competitors, Zubin calculates that the Times lost out on growth of 1.3 billion page views, and asks and answers: "So is 1.3 billion worth page views $20 million over two years? Not knowing anything about their inventory, I'd argue yes." The traffic calculations seem a bit over the top, but we'll still sign on to the conclusion.
The TimesSelect Effect [Odd Numbers]
Says Times cheerleader: "TimesSelect did work, however, in the long haul, just the growth of advertising revenue versus the kind of single-digit growth that we would find in subscription revenue is going to keep us in business longer so that we can keep hiring more reporters and keep covering news of the world." Why can't execs ever say "Wow, that just didn't pan out"? [On the Media, via]
refunds!
TimesSelect Users To Get Free Useless Digital Reader
Sad about today's passing of TimesSelect? Are you one of the few people who actually paid money for it? Well, turn that frown upside down! The New York Times is going to give you a full (pro-rated) refund AND "complimentary access to Times Reader from now through December 31, 2007." TimesReader is the crappy digital version of the paper that reads just like the regular paper. Unless you have a Mac, in which case it doesn't read at all, because it only works for PCs. What a fabulous way to say "Thank you," Mr. Sulzberger! Full e-mail follows. More »
We hear a Times story is coming down the pike "momentarily" about the death of TimesSelect. Yes there'll be dancing! Dancing in the streets! Update: And here she is! TimesSelect, she dies on Tuesday at midnight. This is a great day for America, ladies and gentlemen. Look, we put up the world's tiniest Drudge siren for this momentous event!
Just now we hear that Wednesday will officially bring the announcement of the death of TimesSelect. Hooray! Congratulations, everyone!
Jeff Bercovici thinks TimesSelect, the extremely annoying partial pay wall of the New York Times, is ending this week. Please God please, yes. [Portfolio]
by the numbers
'New York Times' August Numbers: TimesSelect So Not Worth It
The New York Times Company announced its August revenues today, and each of their divisions is trending pretty much as expected—though ad revenues for The New York Times Media Group were up very slightly over August last year, on the back of fashion, hotel and tech ads, as opposed to July, which was down nearly 3% over last year. But more of the same in general: internet ads up! New England ads down. About.com ads still up. Sort of related: stock in the toilet. Most interesting to us: In July, TimesSelect had 225,100 paying customers. As of August, it had 226,800. That is exciting growth of 1700 paying customers! That is somewhere between $7,076.25 and $13,515 dollars, depending on whether folks bought by the month or by the year, which is like half of Maureen Dowd's expense account this month.
by the numbers
The Painful Stagnation Of TimesSelect And Other Bad News
Last week, Keith Kelly claimed that the New York Times will finally end the long national joke that is TimesSelect—you just know Maureen Dowd is cursing those Freakonomics guys right now for being able to refuse to have their blog behind the TimesSelect pay wall!—and a quick look at the just-out July numbers confirms that the core group of 225,000 or so people who signed up to pay for the service in the first place are pretty much the same people who still subscribe. (Everyone else either gets it free as part of their home delivery service, or as part of a college/university deal.) Whenever it does get shut down, it'll be a speck of egg on the faces of Times CEO Janet Robinson and Publisher Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr. But the failure of TimesSelect is probably the least of their worries right now: Their ad revenue, especially in the Regional Media Group (all those little papers they own in places like Lakeland, Florida) and classifieds across the board, is having a bit of a summer slump. More »
Sources at the Times tell the Post that the paper is ready to shut down TimesSelect and return Maureen Dowd et al to their free, unfirewalled glory. [NYP]
new york times
Andy Rosenthal Compelled To Praise The Immense Mistake That Is TimesSelect
Guess what? The New York Times is super proud of TimesSelect, that whopping success for which 218,000 (hey, that's .0007% of the U.S. population! Uh, if our math is good!) have signed up. We know this because they're trotting out Editorial Page Editor Andy Rosenthal to do a dog and pony show in today's Observer. Andy is beaming about the assload of contributors he's signed up to offer web-only content (Stanley Fish, Will Leitch, the dude who played guitar for former Bad Company lead singer Paul Rodgers during the recent Queen reunion tour). And blogs? They've got TONS of blogs! They've got blogs about blogs! More »
media
Media Bubble: If It Makes You Happy
steven johnson
In Steven Johnson Profile, 'Times' Maps Realm Where Ads Meet Editorial Content
Another day, another fawning profile of Park Slope-dwellin', blog-havin', NYU-teachin' (well, when possible!) Ghost Maps author Steven Johnson. What's different about this one, though? Hmmm, let's see. Blah blah Johnson's fondness for blogs, his own websitey/bloggy endeavors, he was "among the first to have a Mac in college," — yeah, where's the new information here? Oh, here it is:"Johnson is currently spending a month writing for TimesSelect, an online commentary service of The Times."Mmm, synergylicious.
In Multimedia Realm Where Book Meets Blog [NYT]
Earlier: Gawker's Coverage of Steven Johnson
