NY Times Removes Columnists Email from Public - Only Select Now

[RamboLiberal]

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/New_York_Times_disconnects_public_email_0113.html

Months after moving its Op-Ed columnists behind a "paywall," the New York Times will now 'disconnect' columnists' public e-mail addresses, RAW STORY has learned.

The Times has advised papers which receive their news content to remove any old e-mail addresses which they may have published alongside Op-Ed columns.

"The New York Times no longer provides public e-mail addresses for its Op-Ed columnists," a memo obtained by RAW STORY asserts. "With the advent of the paper's online program TimesSelect, subscribers are invited to contact columnists from within The Times' Web site, nytimes.com."

My personal opinion is their Select policy has already made their columnists irrevelant to the online world. Too bad for Krugman, Herbert and even Dowd.

[rodeodance]

1. yes, they do have some good editorials, but no fewer will see.

[Poppyseedman]

2. Must be the right wingers making their life a little too tough.

Too bad.

Anybody who writes an opinion should have the cajones to stand up and response for what they write.

If are doing this to increase revenue because they think people will pay to email their opinion writers, I think they are delusional.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. they are doing everything backwards. We are watching the decline of NYT

The gray lady is dead, long live the gray lady.

[acmejack]

4. Absolutely idiotic decision by the wise men in charge at the gray lady!

The WSJ does the exact opposite, here read this right wing editorial content gratis (Please read it!) & the news is a pay service. That must be it! No thinking person with a knowledge of recent history would pay for the NYT's version of current events.

[Vinnie From Indy]

5. What better way to marginalize Krugman, Herbert etc. without having to

actually muzzle them overtly. Putting them behind a pay wall is a revenue losing action. You have to ask why they would choose to lose money. IN reard to the email pay wall I would guess the NYT is trying desperately to deal with the tsunami of outrage that bashes their email servers daily.

[Uncle Joe]

6. Pulling up the drawbridge,

retreating to their ivory tower, you cannot have too much input from the common people.

[newswolf56]

7. The paywall protects NYT and its columnists from accusations of

disloyalty to capitalism and the Bush regime. By erecting the paywall, The Times indicates that it's writing only for the ruling class -- the "select" -- and certainly not for those of us who would replace Bush with an American Chavez (Edwards?) and dump capitalism, whether for a resurrected New Deal or out-and-out socialism. Thus with its readership limited to the rich and very rich, The Times hopes to protect itself from accusations of subversion. Such policies are traditional in tyranny -- the aristocracy can read anything it wants (including work the mere possession of which would get you and me jailed, disappeared or worse) -- which tells me two things:

(1)-The Times is merely preparing for what it sees as the future, and

(2)-my estimate of the future -- far from being too grim -- is in fact not nearly grim enough.

[kurth]

8. Fuck the New York Times

They were cowards then, and they're cowards now.

[baby_bear]

9. I am a West Coaster who subscribes to the NYTimes daily

Do y'all think I should cancel my subscription? I am seriously considering it.

b_b

[nofoil]

10. Oh well

I'm sure they never read their e-mails anyway. Par for the course. The world seems to be loosing its human touch.

[applegrove]

11. I think it costs money to read emails. And notice how no corporations

put their emails up on their websites? Really - I'm sure as much anon email is generated out of Grover's Fax three and fractal descendants as anything. At least if it is done by Times Select - they can make money, 2 manage the emails in a way that allows them to get some meaning out of it.

The bad news is that those with money will have more access to columnists. But you can still email a letter to the editor. And if it means Grover's tree is broken down a bit - I'm okay with that.

Important I think that the columnists know where the information is coming from. So they can weight it.