Paying for the New York Times

Over the past year or so, I've gotten in the habit of reading the New York Times. I started when I got an iPod Touch, and discovered I could read it on that device. I like reading the Times on the iTouch. I could have been reading the NYT for years on my laptop, but seldom did, only when following links from other things I was reading. I could read the NYT on my Kindle, but (1) I'd have to pay and (2) as much as I love my Kindle, it's not really a good device for reading a newspaper because it's not a good device for skimming. The iTouch, with its fingertip control, is a perfect device for skimming; I can hold it in one hand, and use my thumb to select and skim through an article.

Currently the NYT is free on my iTouch and on my laptop, but it looks like that may change next year, as they have announced a vague plan to move to a metering system, where some number of articles per month would be free and then you'd have to pay. My immediate reaction was, well, I'd find something else to read; like everyone, I'm used to having content on the Web free. But that's not completely true: I do pay for some content on the Web. I subscribe to Salon, even though it's easy enough to read articles at Salon without subscribing just by viewing an ad first. I've subscribed to a few niche publications over the years; currently I'm subscribed to a web site by one of my favorite basketball writers. So, obviously, I'm willing to pay for some content on the web. Why not the NYT?

My suspicion is that the NYT will price it higher than what I'm willing to pay. The cost on the Kindle is $14/month, which is $168/year. Nope, sorry, won't pay that. An online-only subscription to the Wall Street Journal is $103/year; I don't want the WSJ, so I wouldn't pay that, and I probably wouldn't pay that for the NYT. Maybe once upon a time, but the Old Grey Lady ain't what she used to be. My gut upper level limit, the price at which I'd grumble but probably decide that it was worth it, is $75/year, which works out to $6.25/month. Above that, there's a steep drop off in the probability that I'd be willing to pay for it at all.

They currently charge $6.95/month or $39.95/year for the crossword puzzle, and the archives are free. The announcement didn't say anything about whether either of these would be affected by the change. Really, the announcement was pretty vague: sometime next year, we're going to charge for articles, but we don't know how much, after you've read some number of articles in a month, but we don't know how many, and both of those might change depending on economic factors. And we're going to build our own technology from scratch, rather than one off the shelf - which means no one should hold their breath waiting for this to actually happen.

What I don't get

I don't understand why Big Business hasn't turned their lobbyists loose all over Congress to get them to pass something like Medicare for all. Don't they understand that insurance company profits are coming at their expense? That if they didn't have to provide health care insurance, at an ever more unpredictable and rising cost, their bottom lines would improve?

We're always hearing about how companies need to cut wages and offshore jobs and get tax breaks so they can be competitive; wouldn't you think that having government-provided health care insurance, like most other industrial nations, would be a competitive boost for them? I don't get it. This is money out of their pockets, and they normally guard those pockets zealously.

Health Care

Faceless bureaucrat

Accountable to Wall Street

Not me.  This is good?

 

"Free market" at work

Stocks up when care is denied.

Payouts cut profits.

 

This is worth keeping?

Costly insurance even

more if you need it.

Health Care Bill

Republicans lie.

"Death panels?" I'm not stupid!

Dems, just pass the bill.

Oh, is that what they're calling it now?

Gov. Sanford (R-SC) just continues to provide us with entertaining euphemisms for cheating on your wife:

"Hiking the Appalachian Trail"

"Driving the coastline of Argentina"

"Crossing lines" with other women.

What's next, Gov?

Vote!

I voted this morning about 10:15. The polling place was the elementary school my daughter used to attend, where about 8 precincts were voting. Usually when I go in to vote, it's pretty quiet; the poll workers are sitting around chatting. Today, they were all busy. I had to wait for one person ahead of me to sign in at my precinct and get my ballot, then I had to wait behind about 10 people for a booth to fill out my ballot. We use optical scan ballots (fill in the bubble), so if I wasn't concerned about secrecy and had had a pen on me, I could have just stood there and voted. Unfortunately, I didn't have a pen, and couldn't find a spare one, so I waited in line.

The whole process took me about 15 minutes. There were a lot more people than usual, even with about 2/3rds of King County voters using absentee ballots. King County (Seattle) and Pierce County (Tacoma) are the only counties in Washington not voting entirely by mail, and next year, King County will move to vote by mail. It is more convenient, but I'll miss going to my polling place and casting my vote on election day.

So, go vote: it's fun!

Irony is Dead

From the NYTimes:

As Mr. McCain did in North Carolina, Ms. Palin repeatedly invoked Joe the Plumber.

“So when he left Joe’s neighborhood in Toledo,” Ms. Palin said, “our opponent didn’t look real happy. Seems that the staged photo op there got ruined by a real person’s question.”

Ms. Palin, as has become her custom, did not take questions from the crowd or reporters.

The Real McCain

There's a strong perception that John McCain used to be better than his campaign has shown, that the Real John McCain used to be more moderate, less angry, wouldn't lie, etc.

I think everything we needed to know about the Real John McCain was demonstrated last night in the third debate when he used air quotes around the "health" of the mother.