In one little sentence, The New York Times is great.**CLICK HERE TO VISIT THEIR GREAT WEBSITE)** But of course it is often bitterly (from ”conservatives”) and sometimes idealistically (Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal, Columbia Journalism Review) criticized for its coverage. Of course I do not worship New York Times as I used to as a teenager. It certainly is a business wanting to make money and has a political agenda that usually serves liberal and Democratic party interests. But like any humongous entity it is bound to have cracks, errors, corruption, scandals etc. But it has survived and stood tall.
My real introduction to New York Times was in 1999 when I got internet for the first time. I had always heard about it but never had laid an eye on it. (Fact: To this day I have never held the original paper copy of NYT in my hands as even the best libraries in New Zealand, both public and academic, do not subscribe to NYT in paper form) But internet access changed it. At the age of 19 it completely satisfied my extreme lust for international affairs, American issues, intellectual stimulation and good writing. I remember, my dial up connection used to be pitifully slow and it cost me for the time I was online. So I used to cheat. I discovered that by making little tweaks in the URL address of news stories I can open all articles for printers, which means all text and no graphics or ads. So, everyday I would quickly download several articles, save them, disconnect internet and read them at my own leisure.
Then I came to New Zealand to study media in 2002. I was introduced to Noam Chomsky and many other resources. New York Times was not the infallible broadsheet it once was. I did not read it all that much. In 2005 I was so incensed with ”TIMES SELECT” (the subscription only sections), I completely stopped reading NYT. I think I even shot a couple of angry emails to NYT. The most annoying bit was, I would get links to NYT stories in Google news and My Yahoo, click on them and be asked to subscribe to TIMES SELECT before I could read! But TIMES SELECT was a flop. It displeased readers, alienated them and the NYT writers. Moreover, many Bloggers would just copy paste articles and make them available to the world for free.
So, in September 2007 NYT decided to scrap TIMES SELECT. I’ve had lots of free time for the last one week and compulsively started reading on the web only then I got to know about the death of TIMES SELECT. And boy am I happy… I have been surfing the delightful maze of a Website of NYT with passion and pleasure. I don’t read it just for News and Politics but also for great writing. The sections on science and technology and especially books and writers are just super awesome. The New York Times is here to stay.
I just read this article from Michele Malkin’s website, CLICK TO READ> ”New York Times hits new 5-year low”. It is almost laughable when ”conservative” writers feel compelled to condemn almost everything they fear as ”liberal media”. I have been visiting lots of conservative blogs and they all religiously drub NYT as the part of their ”conservative” intellectual underpinning. As for the dropped sales, I believe it might be the result of NYT stand on War in Iraq and people’s displeasure with it, TIMES SELECT, rise of internet news services. But it is comforting to know that NYT has not turned into a crowd pleaser like Fox News and various other ”Conservative” media and writers. But here is just one question: Where else do these people suggest we should go? Washington Times? or New York Post? DO YOU HEAR SOMETHING? This is the sound of my skin crawling and my brain screaming.
And what is a NYT 5 year low anyway? Let’s say Michele Malkin’s readership and credibility trebled in the same period. So what would it be now? Up from 0.00000001% to 0.0001% of the total readers ? She sure has benefited from The New York Times’ temporarily declining readership.
