To borrow from the ad makers: PC — $600; word processor — $400; Internet service — $50; having your ideas considered and commented upon by others — priceless. If the NYT had acted in response to this idea rather than making money, I would be for the change. But for now, I’m looking elsewhere, such has here, where my ideas actually get responses and are even noticed by Google (check it out).

So if the columns can still be accessed for free, albeit less conveniently, it begs the question of exactly what “value” the Times is offering that would justify the loss of audience, and therefore influence, being inflicted on its columnists.

Are Massachusetts libraries the exception to the rule in providing remote access to these databases, or are these institutions simply betting that readers will pay the subscription fees believing they have no other choice?

see comment. I finally took the time to transcribe it:

“The Washington Post, for whatever reason– and it would take some investigation to find out exactly why– has been more flexible, more open, more willing to junk some of the old religion, more willing to experiment, and the indicator of this is when they hired this guy Adrian from the Lawrence, Kansas World newspaper which is a tiny, tiny outfit in the middle of Kansas because he was incredibly smart about the web. And the New York Times would basically never do that, because they think of themselves as part of the cultural center, and the cultural elite and Kansas doesn’t have anything to teach New York, in their point of view.”

I finally had time to learn more about “this guy Adrian”– he is Chicagoan Adrian Holovaty, who upon close inspection is not just “incredibly smart about the web.” He’s been winning awards for interactive journalism for the last half-decade, since he was at the University of Missouri. He just won an award from the J-Lab for his innovative creation of the ChicagoCrime.org site, which he has done in his spare time.

I would assume that any leading newspaper would look for the best candidates anywhere in the world. Rich Meislin is now slouch either. Granted, the NYT picked him up thirty years ago from Harvard, but that’s not his fault he wasn’t plucked like a sunflower from the blessed heartland.

The Post, to their credit, created a job opening, and filled it with the most qualified person available for the job. I thought it generally an accepted truth that people in smaller media markets work pretty damned hard to move up, and have greater latitude in experimentation.

I have been looking through the archives of Romanesko’s Memo’s, to learn about the origination of editors of the Times. It’s a long slog; maybe it would be simple if the Times provided this themselves. One thing jumped out at me, though– new ombudsmen Barney Calame, whose forty-year career at the WSJ was the key experience the Times was looking for, also has on resume that he begun his journalism career, like Holovaty, at the University of Missouri.

The paper has over the years deserved it’s good reputation as far as I am concerned. Lately I have been disappointed in Judith Miller and the paper’s defense of her refusal to reveal information in the Plame case. I still read Friedman, though he is not quite as insightful or right. I love Frank Rich and Bob Herbert and Paul Krugman, and M. Dowd occasionally. Mainly though it’s the excellent reporting from Dexter Filkins, John Burns, Steven Erlanger, James Bennet to name a few. AlsoI love Edward Rothstein, Julie Salamon and R.W. Apple to name just a few more. I rely on the arts pages as well as the food and home sections, book reviews, excellent contributor articles to the editorial pages, the letters, and occasionally the magazine articles. In other words I gobble up a lot of it.

So don’t include me in the “we will live without you somehow” crowd. One does wonder why the move inspires such animosity that people would cut themselves off from 97% of the paper that is still free and still excellent.