A Radical Proposal

Actually, their share of the Red Sox is about the only good investment the Times has made under "Pinch" Sulzberger. I mean, wow. What grown man allows himself to be saddled with a twit nickname like that?

 

The idea that the NYT didn't make Krugman is idiocy. Krugman went from being a respected semi-obscure academic into a policy heavyweight who has the ability to influence national opinion because he has the New York Times platform. That platform is what made people talk about him and made him the leading economic voice of this era. Quality and ideas matter, but only to the extent that they are amplified and people know about them, read them, other people talk about them. If the NYT went internet-free, their stature would deteriorate. People would find other publications, talk about other things. The NYT is not an irreplaceable part of American life. There are no irreplaceable media companies or publications.

A question which I do not know the answer to: to what extent would the NYT's subscription base need to grow in order to ensure its financial viability?

The rule on the internet used to be that people would not pay for content unless it was porn, but even that has changed. It used to be easy to find a porn site, but hard to find free porn. But there are plenty of sites out there where anyone with a video camera and a wife with an exhibitionist streak can post videos and the porn companies aren't raking it in anymore. In order for media companies to survive, someone has to solve the paradox of how to create original content, give almost all of that content away and still make money. And I don't think the "giving it away" part is negotiable.

 

Would that really happen? I don't think so.

The internet, for the most part, is news-lite because that's what it can support financially, and because that's how bloggers write -- usually with a minimum of research/reporting.

In fact, without a Paul Krugman to link to, what would be the extent of the reporting at all?

Krugman's overall influence may lessen, because he wouldn't be getting the internet readers. But, if the NYT isn't making money off of them, anyway, why would it care, especially as long as the NYT is still getting its paper (or E-paper) readers that it always has?

Lately, I've starting to think a little like Michael Gee -- that newspapers, for their own good, maybe need to get back to just being newspapers. And, at the very least, they must charge for content.

All together. Now. Even if it is just done as matter of principle. People, including those at internet distributors and TV news outlets, would get over the idea that content/information should be free -- if they had to do it. Right now, they don't.

Otherwise, if Google kills all the papers, it will, eventually, have to hire it's own content producers.

The gap between the internet drivers and content providers must be either widened, for purposes of greater separation, uniqueness and identity. Or else, the divide must be crossed and eliminated.

We can't have it both ways. At some point, there cannot be, and will not be, any straddling, by either side.

 

Bullshit. He always had clout with the people who actually effect policy. That his Q rating went up with the rabble is irrelevant. Whether he sways your opinion is incidental.

Romenesko linked to a good article last week about Foreign Policy magazine and why the Washington Post Co. bought it even though it's usually a money-loser. It's not a big deal that 98 percent of the United States has never picked one up, even by accident in a library. It has clout with the people who are the narrow intended audience -- people who are in a position to actually do something.

The number of hits that Krugman's column gets is gravy and might or might not be financially advantageous, but it is irrelevant to his true level of influence. His intended audience would read him if the NYT chose to deliver his columns by carrier pigeon. In fact, his influence with policy makers likely wouldn't drop even if Krugman stopped writing for the NYT entirely. Presidents sought his counsel before he wrote for the NYT. Who cares if your next-door neighbor never heard of him until he started writing for a newspaper?

 

His advice also became much harder to ignore before your next door neighbor heard of him. Krugman is developing a following with mainstream liberals akin to what Bill Buckley had with conservatives in his heyday. You think he would have had that if he had never written a word for the NY Times?

 

There is a critical difference between Krugman writing for the NYT, and his writing the NYT web site (i.e. whether or not anybody ever sees/reads him on the internet).

Fiscally speaking, as far as the NYT is concerned, he really only needs to appear in the former, not the latter.

Beyond that, his influence doesn't really matter. Not from a business standpoint.

 

How many mainstream opinion-makers can you think of who have zero internet presence? The idea that there is no relationship between the internet and the printed paper in terms of Krugman's fiscal value to the NYT is myopic, to say the least.

I am still curious about how many subscribers it would take to make the NYT or WaPo financially stable independent of their ownership's other holdings.

 

That audience is irrelevant. It has no real power. Krugman's pre-exisiting audience has real power and it valued his opinion long before he wrote for the NYT.

 

Krugman's pre-existing audience was other economists. The NYT broke him out of that subset and transformed him from being just another brilliant economist into someone with the ability to shape opinion on issues outside of his economic specialties.

 

It's not just other media companies that are draining nupe web sites on breaking news. How about Twitter? Or YouTube? Yes, they aren't edited professionally and there's a lot of dross, but you have people who are turning there to get unfiltered reports from real people actually in the middle of a news event.

 

That's ridiculous. His pre-existing audience was elected presidents. He worked on Reagan's Council of Economic Advisors. Bill Clinton interviewed him for a job that Krugman didn't want. That's real influence. Average people reading your column is not true influence. Unless you believe Rush Limbaugh runs the Republican Party.

 

I'm giving up on this "debate" for the same reasons that I don't argue with Lyndon LaRouche supporters or the homeless guy who loiters outside of the public library.