A memo from the Times: "Today we are announcing that we will be introducing a paid model for NYTimes.com at the beginning of 2011. As you will see in the press release, we have chosen a metered approach that will offer users free access to a set number of articles per month and then charge users once they exceed that number."
Please, Arthur Sulzberger, please tell me where I can send an unspecified amount of money so that, at an unconfirmed date somewhere in the future, I can read an unknown number of articles from your publication!
Did he get paid by the word for that statement or did he just learn to write at business school? BRING ME MY RED PEN.
IT MADE MY SKIN CRAWL?
I ACTUALLY STARTED EDITING IT?
Well That won't work for me at least, there are so many nyt articles that give me reader's remorse, I'm not trying to have the Buyer's and Reader's remorse in tandem.
Maybe they're trying to stop people from making fun of their articles. I mean, you'll never actually pay to read an article titled "Snacking Nation -- When Did Grazing Take Over Our Children", so you'll never be able to mock its twee self-regard or clanging prose ("Apparently, we have collectively decided as a culture that it is impossible for children to take part in any activity without simultaneously shoving something into their pie holes."). Rather, you will have to resort to mocking the article's front-page status, or perhaps its mere existence.
I think you are on to something here.
You nailed this to the wall. No more Blog fodder, so this isn't about money at all then? Huh.
Christ, I thought you made up that quote!
Funny thing, context. If I'd read the bit with the pie hole here, I'd have laughed at Balk's turn of phrase, not thought it twee. But I will agree with you as far as the majority of NYTstaff-penned articles today.
@Terse: Good point. The sentence would be great in a different article, which matched its tone (yes, hello Balk). But in this article, in which the author refers to herself not by name, but rather as "Hannah's mom" and ranks being "pinged with requests to bring a little food" for school events among the "horrors that lurk in the e-mail in-box of a working parent" ... it's desperately clangy.
Goodbye to reading the Sunday Styles section...
Moment of Sincerity: The Times is a wonderful product. I plan on paying for it. I hope I'm not a niche audience.
I hope the Times realizes that in order to cater to people who aren't me, Cintra Wilson will have to stop writing exclusively for the UES and 3,000 women in Connecticut. Clark Hoyt will have to stop being a pussy. Their writers will have to get better, search wider, and be something to aspire to. But I also hope they don't pander. Which would go something like:
More Times Magazine, less T Magazine. Less Bono. More Caramanica. Less Friedman. More (insert acceptable substitute for Friedman). Less Bad Itzkoff. More Good Itzkoff. More Meehan. Less Wells. Less Brantley, more Isherwood. More Ryzik. More Dargis. Etc.
There's an incredible product in there. I hope this inspires them to bring it, and bring it hard.
You take the Sports section, I'll take Styles and T Magazine.
YEAH - what fek said, X10.
Bring Albo back. Fire Pogue. Then my hands won't be cold and dead when you pry my PayPal out of them.
"I will gladly pay you Tuesday for an Op-Ed today."