Globeandmail.com carried this Reuters story:

The New York Times Co. plans to stop charging Internet users for access to its columnists and Op-Ed pieces on a section of its Web site known as TimesSelect, The New York Post reported on Tuesday.

The Post, citing a source briefed on the matter, said a decision had been made by top Times executives. The timing of when the service would become free depends on technical issues, including revamping the software surrounding that section of the NYTimes.com site, according to the Post report.

A Times spokesman would not comment on the report, but said: "We continue to evaluate the best approach for NYTimes.com."

There is nothing I could see about this on the Times' site itself -- er, except for the Reuters story (brings to mind the ancient Dave Barry line about relying on the wire service to cover the mass murder in your lobby).

Paul Wells had this to say:

If the New York Times is going to stop charging for "premium" (i.e. not-dry-as-dust) content, then a lot of companies that use TimesCorp as a model for their online comportment will start questioning their own pay-as-you-go models.

I've believed from the beginning that you get a lot more advantage from being in a national conversation than you get from nickel-and-diming a radically smaller number of paying readers. Ad revenues pick up the slack, if there's any to pick up. Slate figured this out, what, nearly a decade ago. One of the many, many, many, many mistakes CanWest made (hi, Ray Heard!) when they bought Southam was to take National Post columnists off the website. It didn't drive a lot of online subscriptions; it just meant the rest of the country wasn't talking about us.

Matt Yglesias is right; over time, the market value of opinion journalism is trending lower, not higher, because the blogosphere clogs the ether with billions of free opinions. Which helps explain why some of us have travelled great distances to be forced back onto our perhaps atrophied reporting chops. Those chops are likelier to pay the rent, over the long term, than a snappy way with a wisecrack. Although I've got that too, if you want it.

Opinion is valueless. Everybody has an opinion.

Informed opinion actually has worth, and the more informed it is, the more worth it has. In that sense, Matt Yglesias is wrong and Wells is right.

The question is whether a publication can best capture value from that informed opinion by getting readers to pay for it directly or advertisers to pay for it indirectly.

Another thing is that the amount charged for a suscription people should rise with the quality of the news has only become a conceit in the Internet era; in pre-Internet times, the cost of a subscription -- while a welcome revenue stream -- was generally seen to be covering the cost of getting the paper to your door.

Given that the Internet slashes that cost, it reduces the logic of charging for delivery.

That being said, quality journalism -- even the pundit kind -- does cost. To me, it should be paid for -- although I concede I'm in a puny minority on this one.

 The NYT hasn't confirmed it's dumping the TimesSelect model, although it hasn't denied the move either.

Since the NYT has some of the best brand-name columnists out there, it's hard to imagine other newspaper websites (WSJ.com, anyone?) staying with a paid content model. A crack in the Globe Insider model occurred earlier this year, when the Globe and Mail allowed five and six-days-per-week newspaper subscribers to access columnists online (previously, you had to pay seven dollars per month on top of your subscription for the privilege).

Now, the big question is this: If everything is available for free on the Web, why charge for a newspaper subscription? And in the era of Craigslist, do newspaper classifieds really add value for the person doing the selling? If the answers to those questions are no and no, then the economics of newspapers suddenly become grim indeed.

Here's more pessimistic news about newspapers: By 2011, there will be more spending on online advertising than on newspapers in the United States, according to this BizReport.com story. That story indicates that online ad revenue will already pass newspaper revenue this year in Sweden and Britain.

Need more bad news? According to the Online Publishers of the U.K., newspaper readers those online access was easier than print, although they still like their newspapers, according to a BizReport.com story.

In a 2006 Wall Street Journal article, Globe e-i-c Edward Greenspon had this to say about newspapers:

 "Newspapers are falling off the cliff," he says. "But we're at the back."

Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of the NYT, reportedly said at this year's Davos Forums that the NYT might not publish on paper in five years, "and you know what? I don't really care, either." More in this AJR article. The closer from that story:

Sulzberger may have exaggerated a little bit back in January, but the spirit behind his words still stands. The challenge is not about the date the printing presses shut down; it's about the day newspapers' print customers and advertisers can no longer support the costs of journalism. Whether that day is five or ten years down the road, it's coming.

I'm going to think about this overnight, but I suspect this current issue may well reverberated on the print side as well as online.

This could be the saddest story you'll ever read. Oh, the humanity!

One thing that allowed the Taliban some measure of popular support in its early years was its hardline stance against corruption -- something that obviously came at a price. Since the group got deposed, corruption ...   more »

The U.S. military can't account for the whereabouts of 194,000 firearms they had given to their brothers-in-arms in the Iraqi security services, according to new report.

Are you having the same disquieting thought as me over who might have gotten their hands on those missing weapons?

From AP via CTV.ca:

Police detained journalists at a rare protest Monday in Beijing, staged by a free-press advocacy group that accuses the government of failing to meet promises for greater media freedom a year before the 2008 Olympic Games.

The detentions, which came during a visit to Beijing by International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge, followed the unfurling of posters depicting the Olympic rings made from handcuffs by members of Reporters Without Borders on a pedestrian bridge outside the headquarters of the Beijing Olympics planning committee.

The Paris-based group said China continues to restrict press freedoms and lock up journalists, political dissidents and activists who publish on the Internet -- despite pledges to liberalize made when bidding to stage the Games.

"Most important is that we didn't come to call for a boycott,'' said Vincent Brossel of the group. "We are calling for concrete achievements, the release of political prisoners, opening of web access and an end to radio jamming.''

The Toronto Star had this last week:

New rules fail to free reporting in China
Despite Beijing's pledge, foreign journalists still experience intimidation, harassment, arrest

Aug 01, 2007 04:30 AM

Bill Schiller
ASIA BUREAU

BEIJING–Despite a much-publicized Olympic pledge to give foreign journalists "complete freedom" to do their job in China, the government has yet to deliver, a new report says.

In fact, rather than open China up entirely, as promised, there is ample evidence Chinese authorities continue to tail foreign correspondents, intimidate their sources, and even reprimand reporters after their stories are published, according to a new survey released today by the Foreign Correspondents Club of China.

Paul Steiger, editor at large of the Wall Street Journal, interviewed himself about Rupert Murdoch's takeover of Dow Jones while delivering the keynote speech at the Asian American Journalists Association convention in Miami.

For the past 14 months, someone has been writing as not the real Steve Jobs, making great sport at the expense of the famously difficult technology mogul. Now Fake Steve has been IDed.

Faces of Faith in America is the latest project of News 21, "a journalism experiment sponsored by the Carnegie and Knight Foundations that assign difficult stories to specifically trained journalism students to be produced in both innovative and traditional ways."

I saw it first at Boing Boing.

Cory Doctorow had this to say about them:

These student presentations are better than anything I've seen from "real" news agencies and could serve as a model for the future of interactive/online journalism.

Apparently, I've vaulted more than 210,000 places to the top of the Technorati heap! Woo-hoo!

Observe:

I promise you, folks: That is not a cheap Photoshopping trick!

However, it means the Top 100 list is seriously out of whack, because Engadget sits above Boing Boing on it, and not this humble site -- which, er, isn't in the top 100 at all.

Oh well. As long as I'm in the top 211,000, I'll be happy.

Now, the question is after reading this post, do you have more or less faith in Technorati?

Update

It was a very brief but glorious time at the top of the Technorati heap. I was getting the best tables in restaurants. Oprah and Larry were going to have me on to explain my appeal. People were asking me for autographs on the street ... Finally, I was a somebody!

But it's all over.

When I checked just now (about 3:05 a.m. EDT), I was back down to 177,881st place (for a shining period in June 2006, I was somewhere around 55,600 -- then Technorati stopped indexing me. Grrr!!).

Search rankings: They giveth, and they taketh away. :)

Given this new development, the question I asked above becomes even more relevant -- urgent, even.

Addendum

It appears I wasn't the only one who shot to the top.

Not because The Bourne Ultimatum is bad. It's not. It's quite good in some ways. But if artistic considerations are the only factor, the series should end here.

Mixed news about global oil supply these days and whether there's enough production to meet demand. Even if there is now, the crunch might really hit in three to five years, and that's without a disruptive geopolitical event.

A round-up of factoids for you, just in case your summer is going too well.

But those who do get it, might find this slice of dialogue from The Simpsons movie very, very amusing:

Cargill: I just got fooled by an idiot!

Cletus: I know how ya feel. I lost a game of tic-tac-toe once to a chicken!

Conrad Black's parting words to reporters as he left a Chicago courthouse on Wednesday were "have a very nice summer." Unfortunately for the "fraudster", as a Globe and Mail sub-headline described him, he won't be able to enjoy this country's summery delights.

Judge Amy St. Eve won't let him return to Canada to await his Nov. 30 sentencing date. Ah well: Summerlicious at Scaramouche is over now, so what would be the point?

Oh, and court heard that a controversial PI thinks Conrad may have stashed US$60 million offshore -- something the defence hotly disputes.

PBS broadcast a Great Performances episode Wednesday night on the Stax/Volt record label, the pre-eminent home of deep southern soul.

Otis Redding (the 40th anniversary of his death will be marked on Dec. 10; return to this space at that time), Wicked Wilson Pickett, Sam and Dave, Booker T and the MGs, Issac Hayes, The Staples Singers -- all of them recorded for Stax/Volt.

Seems some people are looking in askance at the tight relationship between Republican presidential hopeful Rudolph Giuliani and Fox News supremo Roger Ailes.

Reporters -- print reporters; ink-stained wretches -- hung out in the lobby of a Charlottetown, PEI hotel where the federal Tories were meeting Wednesday. If that's not bad enough, they actually approached a cabinet minister and asked him questions.

Fortunately, he survived this terrorist attack, but the RCMP recognized the seriousness of the situation and asked the media to leave.

Here's the CTV.ca story for details.

These may well be the most meaningful statistic from a business perspective:

TV stations in Canada pulled in $2.6 billion last year, up from $2.5 billion in 2005. Radio stations, meanwhile, reached $1.4 billion, an increase of $76 million from 2005. ...

Advertisers are following consumers. The report found online advertising hit $1 billion in 2006, close to double the $562 million spent in online ads in 2005.

For US$5 billion, conservative media magnate Rupert Murdoch is now the owner of the Wall Street Journal.

Here's the news story.

Here's a snippet of NYT media reporter Richard Siklos's take on what it means:

“There’s a very low probability that there’s a grand plan,” said one person close to Mr. Murdoch.

But based on his history, there is little doubt that Mr. Murdoch will directly aim at luring both readers and advertising away from The New York Times and The Financial Times, The Journal’s closest rivals. His strategy will probably include aggressively undercutting advertising and investing heavily in editorial content — particularly in Washington and international news — absorbing losses at first to win the longer-term war.

At its most ambitious, Mr. Murdoch’s vision for Dow Jones would establish The Journal as the rival to The Times in setting the daily news agenda of the country.

The vision has a business corollary: by broadening The Journal’s influence beyond pure business readers, Mr. Murdoch wants to reposition it as not just the world’s leading financial newspaper, but the world’s leading business journalism source for consumers.

From the BBC:

Iran has sentenced two dissident journalists from its ethnic Kurdish minority for being "enemies of God".

Rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF), says Adnan Hassanpour and Hiva Boutimar were sentenced by a court in the eastern city of Marivan.

The two journalists have 20 days to appeal against their sentences, but if their cases are rejected by the Supreme Court the sentence will be carried out.

Iran has executed over 100 people so far in 2007, most of them by hanging.

July 31, 1987 was a Friday. I was a reporter in Fort McMurray, Alta. and I was planning on heading down to Edmonton for the weekend.

Just before I left, I phoned a buddy of mine who worked at CBC to see it he wanted to hook up for a beer. "Can'ttalkrightnowgottagobye," was the uncharacteristically terse response before the phone went dead.

"Wow, that was rude," I thought to myself, wondering what had gotten into him. And with that, I boarded the Red Arrow Express bus for the (relatively) big city.