Poynter’s Steve Outing covered the New York Times move to a hybrid paywall model in Editor & Publisher last week. I mostly agree with half of his analysis: it’s likely worth US$50 to access the Times’ archive (only from 1981 on) for some. But putting the columnists—Outing calls them the paper’s crown jewels—behind the paywall is a big mistake.
The Times is doing nothing short of abdicating it’s information authority.
Outing confirms his grasp of at least part of the information authority bit today in his E-Media Tidbits article, “NYT Op-ed Columnists Locked Down Tight”:
“I must say, it’s disturbing to see some of my favorite columnists vanish except for a single website. (I did purchase a TimesSelect subscription.) While I think that enough people will sign up for TimesSelect for the Times to make some decent money, I fear that the paper’s influence—led by its most known writers who have had worldwide reach—will wane.”
But he’s missing the big portion of the information authority picture when he expresses concern about articles having only a single, authoritative, source on the web.
Information authority on the web is conferred through hypertext links, not republication. It’s exactly the opposite of the print model where authority is conferred by reprinting.
What’s the problem with having a single authoritative source online for Frank Rich’s latest?
When there is more than one source for a work online, the work’s authority is diminished by some percentage for each additional source. More sources, less authority.
This is going to become much more critical as the New new journalism continues to flourish and works are continually developed and edited in real-time on the world live web.
UPDATE: Tuesday 20 August 2005 05:35PM CDT Doc Searls, as usual, nails it:
“Tom Friedman, Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman, Nicholas Kristof and the rest of the op-ed crew must be spinning in the graves the Times just dug for their influence.”
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