ON NEW YORK TIMES' TIMESSELECT HELL CONTINUED

UNTIL HELL FREEZES OVER?

VC Fred Wilson's heartfelt post titled "Walls of Mass Destruction" is worth checking out.  It's nice to have company on an issue that made me vent in a post back last month in a post titled "On the New York Times' TimesSelect Hell". 

It gives some more reasons for readers to dislike the New York Times' decision to put their columnists behind a subscription firewall and spin it as a new "feature" called TimesSelect.  Although he's a subscriber to the paper version, like myself, he says:

"Although we can easily afford the cost of Times Select, I refuse to pay it."

Fred in particular is expressing his frustration that he can't blog an interesting columnist from the paper:

"I want to blog it, as Jeff did today.

But I need to get to the piece in order to blog it.

And I can't get there unless I pay more money.

This is nonsense."

It's a valid point, and I agree with it.  I haven't done a single post quoting my favorite NYTimes columnist Thomas Friedman since they implemented the new "feature".

My additional beef with TimesSelect is how difficult the paper makes it to activate TimesSelect for paying subscribers who are already entitled to get it.

In my post last month, I explained how I made several efforts to activate my TimesSelect subscription as a paying customer to the paper version, with no success due to ongoing problems with the Times' Customer Service processes.

Again, I realize that the company is undergoing tougher financial times given the cyclical and secular trends facing the industry.  I also understand they're trying to protect the circulation business in terms of trying to differentiate the value add to their traditional advertisers.

But I do feel that they are eroding the personal brands of their columnists and reporters, in a world where their work should be exposed to as wide an audience globally as possible, not to mention eternally searchable via the crawlers and indexes of the world's search engines.

Again, as I said in my earlier post:

"It'd almost be interesting to start a pool here...how long before TimesSelect is deselected by the company?  A few weeks, months or years?  I mean if the once-mighty AOL has to bring down its walled content gardens, how is the New York Times going to be able to hold out?"

Any takers?

Comments

[laura]

hey, I've been able to get around some of the TimesSelect BS. Unfortunately, it doesn't work for things that were TimesSelect from the get-go (like op-ed columns), but it does work if you're looking for something that's older than two weeks (if it's really old, though, this may not work). Instead of searching for the article on the Times website, which will tell you that you need to pay to see it, just copy and paste the title into the search bar. Google will lead you to the free version!