Media Notes Extra: "Salon (which charges $35 a year for a subscription) has a piece by Farhad Manjoo questioning a new pay-to-surf policy by the NYT:
'You can't stand David Brooks but you read his column anyway, twice a week. Paul Krugman's anti-Bush rants ring so true for you that you ditch your work in the morning to e-mail them to your friends. Then there's Thomas Friedman, the world's favorite Middle East explainer; Bob Herbert, well-intentioned, if sometimes boring; and Maureen Dowd, indecipherable. Yet such is the power of the New York Times' Op-Ed page that even though some of its columnists may drive you into a rage that you can barely articulate, you still care deeply about what they have to say. So you read them all the time.
'But will readers care about the Times' columnists if they've got to pay for the punditry? The paper is betting that they will. On Monday, the New York Times Co. announced that beginning in September, Times columns will no longer be available free on the Web. News stories, however, will remain free to readers. The paper will charge $49.95 per year for TimesSelect, a service that gives readers online access to the work of a few select writers -- columnists on the Op-Ed page as well as in other sections of the paper, including Business, Sports, and Metro.'"
