Fred Wilson nails it with his post about how NYTimes Select has killed the influence (online at least) of the top op-ed writers at the Old Grey Lady. Back in the day, the first thing I did in the morning was go to NYTimes and read the latest from Dowd, Friedman, Rich, Tierney, etc. Their opinions mattered. We discussed their ideas on blogs, they were thought leaders. They are no longer - due entirelyt to the NYTimes decision to hide them behind the “Select” vail.

An even sadder side effect of the walled garden that is the Times Select is the fact that their “most interesting articles” feature has been watered down. That list used to be a first class shortcut for finding the articles that I had to read. Now, I rarely find an article on the list that really captures my interest. It has become a B-list of sorts - what would have been the #25 - #50 most forwarded articles by users.

I’d love to see the data for the months following the implementation of Times Select. Did readership dip online? Have they actually increased revenue by getting more pulp subscriptions? I suppose that if they have increased revenue or if their readership online hasn’t decreased, then is their value to having their key writers widely circulated on line? And I wonder if there will be a larger, more noticeable difference further on down the road?

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 2nd, 2006 at 1:28 pm and is filed under Business, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.