- "The Times has tried twice to create pay-wall models that have utterly failed"
Um, not true. They did it once. It was called Times Select. It actually worked quite well, however the advertising market picked up in a big way where revenue from ads would exceed subscriptions. Not the case anymore, but thats another story.
- "The Times does very little investigative journalism of significance"
Ok, I'm gonna leave this one alone. Clearly we are on different planets.
- "The Times has strong pretensions, as evidenced by its coverage of socialite weddings, etc."
I guess so... ? Is it? I mean its not tabloid, but I think thats good, right? Whats the "etc"?
- "In the buildup to the Iraq war it was the Times' sloppy fact checking that sold the war to many, many people who had been skeptical prior to reading its coverage."
I'm not sure how this relates to helping your point about "transition into the digital age" or the whole "tweet" thing.
- The Times attack on the Pulse news reader turned what should have been superb publicity into a petty attack on a small startup that obviously loves the Times.
Yeah, I personally think that was short-sighted.
"For all its flaws, it's still a great paper, but far less great than it once was or than it could be if it had more sense and guts and had to fight harder to maintain its position."
Been waiting to say this... ahem..."{citation needed}"
"Banning a word like "tweet" suggests…"
Okay, I think you need to re-read the article (or maybe I do). The word is not banned, it is highly discouraged. It does give examples where "tweet" is appropriate so therefore it is not banned.
"We have wars going on and all sorts of corporate fraud and the Times is wasting ink (or pixels) on why it banned a silly sounding word?"
The Times is also wasting many hours every day on things like lunch, coffee breaks, expense reports, HR policies and the like. Don't they know there is a war on!?
And to re-visit the "embarrassing way that the NY Times has attempted to transition into the digital age", I just want to say this:
- NYTimes.com is 83rd Most-Visited web site on the Internet (1st for Newspaper) according Google: http://bit.ly/bsbBMB
And in case it does come up, this is entirely my own view and not that the Times at which I work but I'm not in editorial or anything like that. I just felt that while you made some good points you were off-base on a few.
To wrap up, I just re-read what I wrote above and it could come across as snarky which is not my intention, rather I was aiming (badly) to be a little tongue-in-cheek.
Good points. I admittedly was a bit unfair. I do think it's a great paper. I guess I just have a bit of a bias against things that come off as "language police" activity.
- "The Times has tried twice to create pay-wall models that have utterly failed"
Um, not true. They did it once. It was called Times Select. It actually worked quite well, however the advertising market picked up in a big way where revenue from ads would exceed subscriptions. Not the case anymore, but thats another story.
- "The Times does very little investigative journalism of significance"
Ok, I'm gonna leave this one alone. Clearly we are on different planets.
- "The Times has strong pretensions, as evidenced by its coverage of socialite weddings, etc."
I guess so... ? Is it? I mean its not tabloid, but I think thats good, right? Whats the "etc"?
- "In the buildup to the Iraq war it was the Times' sloppy fact checking that sold the war to many, many people who had been skeptical prior to reading its coverage."
I'm not sure how this relates to helping your point about "transition into the digital age" or the whole "tweet" thing.
- The Times attack on the Pulse news reader turned what should have been superb publicity into a petty attack on a small startup that obviously loves the Times.
Yeah, I personally think that was short-sighted.
"For all its flaws, it's still a great paper, but far less great than it once was or than it could be if it had more sense and guts and had to fight harder to maintain its position."
Been waiting to say this... ahem..."{citation needed}"
"Banning a word like "tweet" suggests…"
Okay, I think you need to re-read the article (or maybe I do). The word is not banned, it is highly discouraged. It does give examples where "tweet" is appropriate so therefore it is not banned.
"We have wars going on and all sorts of corporate fraud and the Times is wasting ink (or pixels) on why it banned a silly sounding word?"
The Times is also wasting many hours every day on things like lunch, coffee breaks, expense reports, HR policies and the like. Don't they know there is a war on!?
And to re-visit the "embarrassing way that the NY Times has attempted to transition into the digital age", I just want to say this:
- NYTimes.com is 83rd Most-Visited web site on the Internet (1st for Newspaper) according Google: http://bit.ly/bsbBMB
- http://developer.nytimes.com
- http://open.nytimes.com (my favorite: http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/self-service-prorat... )
- http://www.nytimes.com/timeswire
- http://www.nytimes.com/timesskimmer
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadoop#Hadoop_on_Amazon_EC2.2FS...
And in case it does come up, this is entirely my own view and not that the Times at which I work but I'm not in editorial or anything like that. I just felt that while you made some good points you were off-base on a few.
To wrap up, I just re-read what I wrote above and it could come across as snarky which is not my intention, rather I was aiming (badly) to be a little tongue-in-cheek.