You’re Cramping My Style, Dude

~ Laura

That G-D D-mned Times Select! Rude gesture! Rude gesture!

The Times’s new policy of holding back certain columns from the freeloading Internet hoards is interfering with my God given right to blog about the Times op-ed writers. David Brooks and Maureen Dowd need me. They do. We bloggers bring them readers, and they are such yummy blog fodder.

You mean I should PAY for the paper? No way, dude.

And then I wanted to blog about an Atlantic Monthly Review of Our Bodies, Ourselves, which the reviewer says is hopelessly dated. Our Bodies states that “the main reason that women try to “improve our appearance’ is to attract and win the approval of men.” Nonsense says the reviewer. Women get fake boobs to impress other women.

There were other juicy points in the review that would have made a fun blog post, but Atlantic Monthly only lets their subscribers read the whole article on line. Now, I have the magazine in front of me. Why would I need to look at it on-line, as well, except to spread the word to others?

This is foolish, foolish policy, Mainstream Media. ‘Ya listening to me? You need the online buzz to drive readership. Online buzz has made the editorial writers into stars. Even if all readers aren’t paying, it is still readership which is means that you can charge advertisers more. You might make me pay $4 a week for my subscription, but you lost thousands of other readers and then millions of advertising bucks.

It’s bad business to restrict online access to printed material. The Times stock tanked this week partially as a result of this new policy.

And the Dude says that it is totally fascist.

Published by Laura

8 thoughts on “You’re Cramping My Style, Dude”

  1. Horray! When I went to click on this special, I was like “F..K” And then I moved promptly on to something else. Their loss.
    And of course other women dress for other women. Women are competitive in their search to snag a honey and must out-do their competitors. It’s the market economy of love.

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  2. They’re having the same problem as the music industry–not understanding the benefit of providing free content to increase readership/listenership, and eyeballs on ads, and future sales of other items and back catalog (in the case of music at least).
    Buggy-whip thinking in a rocket-ship world. Stupid Times.

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  3. Yes, the buzz will move to those sites that don’t put their content behind a wall. AOL is learning this lesson and opening up their proprietary content. Kinda ironic that the others aren’t seeing the value in this. . . .

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  4. They’ve just lost daily ads from probably their biggest advertiser (Federated) and have laid off company-wide about 700 people. About half of those are editorial. My guess is their in panic because ROI ain’t what it used to be. And competition from those free commuter dailies is eating into their single copy sales.

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  6. I do hope somebody blogs that Atlantic review. Some of what it had to say I thought was pretty fairly observed, though not the women-get-boob-jobs-because-women-just-like-to-look-nice thing

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  7. yes, I thought it was interesting, too. I’m not sure if it’s in bad form to blog about an article that other people can’t check out for themselves.

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  8. Well, I think the Times is dumb to do it, but I am about to pony up for an Atlantic sub because I can’t get it online. I think a daily paper is different from a magazine, though I’m not quite sure why.
    The Atlantic also give you teasers on site, which gets you interested in the article.

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