Agents of the Times
"People think nothing of ordering a $25 martini at the hotel bar -- but pay 50 bucks for archived material at the Times? Oh my God!"
Thus spake Martin Nisenholtz at some conference in NY City in pooh-poohing concerns and explaining the NY Times's decision to charge for some content on its website (its an AdAge link, I think you have to register).
Color me unimpressed. If I recall correctly, back in the bygone stone age of the dub-dub-dub, the NYT tried that and lost their shirts. The first and still most successful model for charging for web news content was and is the Wall Street Journal, which actually delivers news. Heck, I still subscribe, and I don't even drink martinis.
But for those of us who have learned to interpret the fake-but-accurate pronouncements of the MSM we hear a different tune. Mainly: "this is how we have determined to make money off of all those blogs."
"Why can't Amazon.com-type revenue shares apply to information sites?" he asked the audience, saying he is kicking around the blog idea and wants feedback from potential partners. He explained the idea as a revenue-sharing arrangement with bloggers who would offer the paper's columns to their users in the blogosphere. "They would be agents of the Times," he said."
Oh. My. God. I wish I could be inside Roger Simon's head right now as it dawns on him that not only is he affecting editorial and news content at the Times by his amazing reporting on the Oil For Food scandal, but now he's directing management decisions as well by his crazy (but hopefully brilliant) idea for Pajamas Media (of which I am a member, although I still don't know how it's going to work, but I have every expectation that I will soon be rich and famous, which is how Kos and the rest of the lefty bloggers must feel right now pursuant to the Times's trial balloon, though Kos is already famous and maybe even rich at this point but you catch my drift).
