The New York Times conundrum

Sadly, there are quite a few New York Times links in my posts. I say sadly because the NYT is about to go pay-only (or pay-mostly, as they want to paint it), which means a lot of visitors won't be able to follow the links in my posts. That's not good. From now on, I'm going to try to use alternate links for my posts. The heck with the Times.

This also raises the question of whether to subscribe to the New York Times online or simply sneer at its paywall. I think the upcoming subscription is supposed to cost $20 a month. Like Apple's 99 cents per song, it's the highest price they think we'll cough up without choking.

I could just subscribe and be done with it but it would set a precedent. And when you play that precedent forward it doesn't make sense. Will we end up paying twenty dollars for each online news site we rely on? I like the LA Times and the Boston Herald too, and quite a few other "papers". This pay scale won't work for a serious news reader who doesn't have a lot of money to spread around.

And of course, I haven't even mentioned the elephant in the room: what the New York Times prints is not always the truth. See, I read Glenn Greenwald and Dean Baker every day, so I know the Times peddles nonsense to solidify the positions of its overlords, especially the government. And this is the "paper of record". It's despicable.

I'll pay for the Times online when they begin to call torture torture and terrorism terrorism, and the latter no matter who the perpetrator, including the United States government or assorted rightwing nitwits. They'll also have to start calling nonsense nonsense. Is that really so hard to do? They present wingnut views as if they make sense. That's not what I want from a newspaper, especially when the facts are so easy to check. Anyone can do it -- but the reporters don't? What's wrong with this picture?

I won't pay for the Times until they start printing the truth. But if they did, if they returned to actual journalism, I'd rush back and subscribe -- and the hell with the bad precedent I mentioned earlier. We need an accurate news source that doesn't cower before government and business. If the New York Times could fill that bill, yes, I'd pay. Happily.

We will develop other news-gathering sources over time to fill the gap that the Times leaves in its wake. And we will always remember that the NYT didn't come through when it counted -- not on the Iraq war, not on the economy, not in the Bush election cycles, and not now, when nonsense is never called by its true name. The New York Times hasn't committed an act of journalism in the past ten years, with the exception of publishing the truth about the widespread surveillance and wiretapping-without-warrants by the Bush administration -- but let us recall that it also hid this information for a year, choosing not to publish it until after Bush was re-elected. 

The New York Times let the people of America down and they're still letting the people down. That's the bottom line. So no more NYT links unless there's absolutely no alternative.