Even before Times Select was announced, word leaked from back channels that the decision was a polical compromise between the editorial, publishing and circulation departments. For whatever reasons, circulation won. The result was not ideal by anybody’s reckoning, but the Times put lipstick on it, and it worked, to some degree. A quarter million people subscribed.

It’s clear now that publishing (the money side of the paper) is winning, with editorial (I am sure) going along.

The difference between early 2005 and today is that the Times today recognizes the money to be made from advertising on everything (archives as well as current “content”), while they didn’t see that in the first place. Or chose not to see it. Either way, follow the money.

The question now is whether the Times cheapens its daily print edition value by giving away online what print subscribers pay hard cash for. I suggest that the answer is yes. And that, in the long run, we will save a lot of trees while cheapening a great (literal) newspaper.

Unless, that is, a way can be found for readers to pay online for some kind of relationship with the Times. I think it can, but that’s another thread.

Ah. Then no, I would never have read them (though I was intrigued by the Cavett titles that would go by on the Times’ front page). Being behind the TimesSelect pay wall, they might as well have been writing in the South China Morning Post in Chinese, as far as I was concerned.

Hal– the Times started pressing a slew of public figures/public intellectuals (Dick Cavett, Stanley Fish) into blogging roles, for TimesSelect readers. now they are available to all.

As I wrote at the time, in May 2005 when it was announced:

“This is a colossally stupid business move, and it appears the Times knows it. Because I can’t figure out why they wouldn’t go and implement it today if they had any confidence at all. Running it as a trial balloon until September shows how uncertain they are.”

…

“So, what will the end result for the Times be? Marginally more bucks from a devoted few, while the vast bulk of their readers stop visiting them. Which doesn’t just cut their revenue stream from subscriptions, but will cut their current banner ad revenues. It will also make their Op-Ed writers less relevant, by taking away some of the bully-ness of their pulpit.

Fewer readers, less revenues, less prestige. Not often one sees a trifecta like that.”

…

To answer your own questions:

“whether they were NYT subscribers…”
No.
“…or did they purchased TimesSelect,…”
No.
“… whether they read more or less of the Op-Ed columnists,…”
Considerably less — I used to read them multiple times a week, and then stopped entirely when TimesSelect started.
“…whether they read any of the public-figure-bloggers that the Times took on…”
Anyone in particular in mind? Because I’m not sure who you mean here. (Which probably means, “No,” but I’d like to be certain.)

Fort Business. Because the Competition is out there, pretending to be one of your Customers. The only way to keep them out is to attack your Customers.

Thanks, that’s a good start.

As for grave-dancing and moral arguments, these are tough calls, of course, but it’s clear that the commenters to blogs like yours certainly demonstrate a lot more passion on this issue.

Also, I’m very familiar with the Fort Myers News-Press, I have spoken to a number of people down there about some of the civic activism which Gannett Co. has been given a lot of unquestioned praise for in the cit media circles; in fact, and one of my sources has been begging me to publish already. But I’m afraid your quick tally Google searches from last November doesn’t really meet the level of evidence I’m looking for.

There are a few assumptions about Google search results that people have been making that I will address. I have noticed that the Times was very circumspect in the reasons they gave. I will report tonight.

Jon

Indeed, there is a lot of conflation and confusion going on. I think you’re right to flag the need for a distinction between moral and business arguments for locking or unlocking archives. For what it’s worth, my main case against locking up archives has been a business one and not a moral one. Note that my ‘money river’ metaphor was all about business and not about morality. I think it’s a simple fact that papers can get far more business leverage out of exposed archives than out of locked-up ones. And that this was already apparent back when the Times made the decision to create Times Select.

I also think your “grave dancing” label is a bit misleading, at least in cases such as mine, Dan Gillmor’s and Jeff Jarvis’s. it was extremely frustrating at the time to see this first-rank newspaper make a plainly bad business decision — one which, not surprisingly, had a great deal of bad influence on other papers. (And i mean “bad” in the business rather than the moral sense.) What each of us feels now is not vindication or cause for glee (note that I declined Rex Hammock’s invitation to gloat), but rather of relief from a persistent source of exasperation about one paper’s practice that was a terrible model for the rest of its industry.

Back to the business issue. It’s important to note that the leverage of archive exposure is also non-trivial quite aside from the Google AdSense advantage. What I wrote here comparing the News Press of Fort Myers to the News-Press of Santa Barbara also makes the business case for exposed archives. The former exposed theirs at the time, while the latter did not — and the difference in lookup results was immense. By locking up their archives, newspapers exclude themselves from searches concerning the very regions they serve. This is a major disadvantage for them.

For your piece (which I eagerly await) I also encourage you to consider the price papers pay for exposing their current editorial, for which they charge their daily newsstand customers and subscribers. I think the case for locking up current editorial (to protect paid circulation) still needs to be made. “Charging for the news and giving away the olds” online maps exactly to what papers do offline. The problem with “charge for the news and give away the olds” is that the model costs papers much if not all of their current online advertising income. Could they do that? I wonder.

If daily papers (and, for that matter, magazines) give away both current and archival editorial (which will probably happen, if other papers follow the New York Times’ example), their business model will be little different than their free competitors, with the single exception that the daily papers charge for the physical product. Here in Boston, the Globe and the Phoenix would be on equal footing, at least online. It’s not what the Globe would like, I am sure, but there it is.

In any case, I think we are all on more solid ground talking about the choices in business terms rather than in moral ones — even as we admit that the moral ones do matter.