Now that the New York Times has moved their op-ed columnists behind the $49.95 iron curtain, I can no longer link to Paul Krugman’s columns… Or, more correctly, I can still link to them, but, unless you’re a subscriber to the Times, or pay the annual on-line fee for their “Select” service, you won’t be able to get to them.
So, I was just sitting here, thinking about what we could do. (As Krugman’s columns are so important to those of us on the left, I’m sure there are hundreds of people right now pondering the same exact thing.) I know that, given the laws, I can’t just reprint his entire columns here in their entirety. But, I don’t suppose that anyone would have a problem if I just posted a few paragraphs. I believe that would still fall under “fair use”… OK, so here’s an idea. What if several bloggers got together and did the same thing, each posting a small section, so that, when taken together, they formed a complete story? If we each posted a few paragraphs, and if we each linked to the blog containing the sections immediately in front of and behind ours, then it should work, right? And, if done in a organized fashion, it could be almost organic. Someone could take paragrah one, and then immediately someone else could sign up for paragrah two. It would be like BitTorrent, only on a macro scale.
So, here, as a test to see if it works, is a section of today’s column by Paul Krugman, “Tragedy in Black and White.” If you have access to the Times Select, and a website of your own, and want to post either the chunk of text directly before or after this one, just leave a link in the comments section.
…By all accounts Ronald Reagan, who declared in his Inaugural Address that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” wasn’t personally racist. But he repeatedly used a bogus tale about a Cadillac-driving Chicago “welfare queen” to bash big government. And he launched his 1980 campaign with a pro-states’-rights speech in Philadelphia, Miss., a small town whose only claim to fame was the 1964 murder of three civil rights workers.
Under George W. Bush – who, like Mr. Reagan, isn’t personally racist but relies on the support of racists – the anti-government right has reached a new pinnacle of power. And the incompetent response to Katrina was the direct result of his political philosophy. When an administration doesn’t believe in an agency’s mission, the agency quickly loses its ability to perform that mission.
By now everyone knows that the Bush administration treated the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a dumping ground for cronies and political hacks, leaving the agency incapable of dealing with disasters. But FEMA’s degradation isn’t unique. It reflects a more general decline in the competence of government agencies whose job is to help people in need…
If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, but at least I tried… And, more importantly, I’m sure someone will find a way to ensure that we can keep sharing his columns. They’re too important to keep locked up… Knowledge, as they say, wants to be free.
12 Comments
Totally unrelated but, Jonathan Lethem just won a Macarthur Genius Award. Unless its a hoax, I am sure Jonathan Safran Foer is howling in his own recently purchased 5 million dollar fortress of solitude…movie deals not withstanding.
So sorry Mark, but I just had to share w/ people who might appreciate this and if they are out there they read your website.
Maybe the idea was to lure all the (black) evil-doers to New Orleans so that we wouldn’t have to fight them elsewhere.
It worked well in Iraq, so why not here too?
“Bring ’em on!”
Also unreachable behind the NYT firewall is a great new column by Frank Rich. Here are some highlights.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/18/opinion/18rich.html?ex=1284696000&en=64a2f63f0c39dc70&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
No Zank You, Dahling: NYT Times Select
You think I or anyone else is going to pay $49.95 a year to get access to your Times Select to read your brainless columnists that say the same crap every day?
David Brooks: “College professors are evil and the urban jungle is the liberals’ fault….
OK, so no one liked my idea… I can live with that.
Really, I’m OK.
Never Pay Retail is a blog that is cataloging free links to NYT columnists on other sites. It’s profiled on Wired News today.
Very cool. Thanks, George.
And the Times fired 500 people today. (Not because of George’s link.)
I’m sure the two things are related. As much as I like the paper, and as much as it pains me to write this, I suspect that it’s not a coincidence that this happened right after “Times Select” got up and running. I’ve seen the same thing happen a bunch of times… Companies get everyone to pull together and work extra-hard to launch a new product, and then, once it’s all done, they hand out the pink slips.
In fact, Robert Fisk’s columns are widely available. Maybe something like this can be done with Krugman’s?
Krugman’s column today is well worth reading and I think that it deserves a wider audience… Maybe I’ll bring my idea up again and see if people go for it this time.
FInd the Brownie
( it is down a few posts )