TimesSelect and 'Free Plus'

I wrote recently on the New York Times’s new TimesSelect program (Aside: why on earth did the Times pick two words that end and start with the same letter for the name?) but after reading Jay Rosen’s thought-provoking and comprehensive post on the matter, I feel more is necessary.

One of the main points in the posting is that charging for opinion columns makes no sense since one non-governmental figure's views on something are worth(less) as much as the next informed person's, thus, no one would be inclined to pay for them.

To me, this idea is based on the theory that most people care more about what one ought to think about the news rather than what it really and truly is. That’s perfectly natural considering that no one has the time to try and find out everything about every story.

At this point, the best way a news medium can deliver on this expectation is through an opinion piece or in a toned down “news analysis,” since like their publics, they, too have limited resources to discover what’s really happening.

This is why the opinion columns in newspapers (whether about sports, news, politics, or the party scene) are what keeps people reading. News consumers come back for more because they expect not only good information but the manner in which it is delivered. It’s also the primary reason why blogs have become so popular so rapidly in this country but not in others with similar internet penetration. (The USA is not even the first in that regard.) People like news delivered with some attitude, especially if done with one they find agreeable. The American press’s absurd pretensions to objectivity saw to it that the public’s desire for their preferred news was being largely ignored.

Talk radio, Fox News Channel, and blogging have been the ways in which this public desire for more zesty news coverage have been met. That isn’t to say that the “new media” are all that profound, though. Most blogs don’t produce much that’s of great value, especially since the plurality of them seem to be written by people under 20 who comment on their daily experiences. Similarly, the missing-white-girl-obsessed Fox News and the johnny-one-notes of talk radio usually don’t provide perspicacious analysis or engage in superb investigative reporting (not to say they can’t).

What the new media do provide is a means to facilitate discussion. Agree or disagree, getting your news from someone who admits to being a human being is far more engaging and entertaining than listening to broom-up-the-ass talking heads who insist that not only do they not have opinions, even if they did, they’d never allow them to intrude into their reporting.

Statistical studies bear this conclusion out. In a survey released last June, the Pew Research Center for People and the Press found that 55 percent of respondents liked it when news outlets presented debates between differing sides, as opposed to 6 percent who said they disliked it. On the question of personality in the news, 53 percent said they liked it when “reporters with present personalities” present the news.

Among people who follow so-called hard news heavily, 43 percent said they like news that shares their viewpoint compared to just 13 percent among those with low interest.

More than likely, the TimesSelect program is based on the above concepts.

This may seem odd at first since the arguments I just mentioned are points used by critics of TS. The commonplace nature of opinion is just the thing that the dominant Times faction seems to be banking on--except in their minds, the expectation is that the public not only wants to know what others think about sports, news, and politics; it also will place a premium on the opinions of the newspaper’s reliable, accurate, and bemusing columnists.

That’s a gamble in my view even though it’s certainly true that a fairly large number of people--the types who believe every word the Times publishes with the exception of 65 percent of every David Brooks column. The trouble for the Times, though, is that this group of people is an ever-shrinking number of people.

This leads me to wonder: What if TimesSelect (especially the part where columnists will interact with subscribers) is actually just a deal sweetener to get people to subscribe to the paper’s archives? A ham-fisted concession to the idea of information communities?

If that’s what TimesSelect is, I think the idea could have some merit if the cost-benefit ratio were a bit more lucrative for the customer and more enticing for the window-shopper.

Not only should the Times allow today’s columns to be available tomorrow, as Doc Searls suggests, the paper should allow subscribers to see tomorrow’s news today (and not just Sunday’s as it is at present). An expansion of the public editor’s office to include a “subscribers’ advocate” might also prove attractive, especially since current public editor Byron Calame is perpetually overwhelmed with queries.

Another valuable asset for TimesSelect subscribers might be the idea of user-controlled blogs, from which the paper might draw during times of breaking news as some media outlets did during the London Underground attacks. TimesSelect may also prove useful as a breeding ground for an NYT foray into internet television.

With some modifications, I think TimesSelect could be made more likely to succeed. In its present form (and present price), I don’t think it’s worth much for the people who are inclined to pay for online news services.

In most of the analysis on the subject that I’ve seen, the discussion seems to assume that a news source should either be fully free or entirely subscriber based and not a free/pay hybrid. I disagree. A hybrid site which is “free plus extras” can succeed as WSJ.com/OpinionJournal.com and RushLimbaugh.com have shown. Limbaugh’s site has been profitable from day one while the Journal’s has been profitable for the past few years.

Categories: new york times, web business

Eight Years of Spam

I've sometimes thought about starting a spam blog, a place where people can read some of the more creative spams, solicitations or viruses that come along. Since I've moved over to Google's GMail service, though, the amount of spam I receive has declined quite a bit so that hasn't been feasible (plus who needs more work?)

Fortunately, Paul Wouter has this interesting collection of spam which he maintained for eight years, complete with lots of statistics and graphs. It's worth checking out if only to see the summaries.

Categories: spam

Pennywit Gets Cold-called

Pennywit recounts his experience being called up and asked to join an anti-Sheehan protest.

Yet another reason I'm glad I don't have a land line.

Categories: poll sampling

Evaluating NYT, WSJ's Latest Efforts

Alan Mutter has two worthwhile posts up assessing the Wall Street Journal's new "Weekend Journal" and the NYT's new subscription service I wrote about recently.

Categories: large newspapers, web business

Opera Browser Becomes Free

Opera Software, makers of my preferred web browser, announced yesterday that its signature product is now totally free for users. Great news.

Via Andrew Cory at Dean's World.

Categories: web browsers

David Hasslehoff to Record Rap Album

Via Ace, I learned today that David Hasslehoff of "Baywatch" and "Knight Rider" (my favorite childhood TV show) fame is set to record a rap album under the name Hassle the Hoff. Supposedly washed up rapper Ice-T will be producing.

Categories: pop culture

Bush Admin Attempts to Pursue Porn Purveyors

I really don't know why people think that this congressionally funded campaign to target people who create and distribute porn depicting "bestiality, urination, defecation, as well as sadistic and masochistic behavior" will do any better than federal government's CANSPAM Act did to reduce junk email.

CANSPAM has basically been a total failure. It failed primarily because trying to regulate the internet is a fool's errand--the more a country manages to suppress domestic violators, the more profitable the prohibited enterprise becomes outside its borders. Users will always be able to find a way around the restrictions as well. The CANSPAM restrictions have only made things more difficult for organizations who do bother to comply with the law.

It's basically axiomatic. Legislation trying to ban a socieotechnological behavior must rely on superior technology, which eventually will be circumvented. Without destroying free society by instituting controls on the client end, regulating the internet is like trying to draw water with a sieve.

In essense, this is the governmental conundrum. No one likes the fact that sick people do sick things. But unless those wrong actions are of such magnitude ipso facto (such as murder) or are common enough (tax evasion, drug use) that they are problems in the aggregate to the civic majority, no action will be taken. In this case, none should.

Categories: web freedom, spam, porn

Easy Categories for Blogger Users

Probably the most annoying things about using Blogger to run your blog is its lack of categories for your postings. As usual with technology, a big company's failures (Google in this case) means users need to create workarounds.

After getting asked this question a number of times, I decided to develop a solution which is easy to use once set up and requires less time or knowledge than other solutions out there which rely on Technorati, Delicious, or both.

All of these solutions work but to me they weren't complete. If you wanted the categories not to turn up results from other blogs when readers clicked on their links, you had to sign up for a Delicious account and manually bookmark your postings. If you avoid Delicious (many do), then you're stuck with generic Technorati tags. Plus if either of those sites go down, your categories are useless.

To solve this dilema, I decided to rely on Blogger's built-in search engine to create the categories. That way, if people can read your blog, they can use your categories. Plus, you can have as many as you like without worrying about organization.

Installing Blogger Categories

1. Make sure you're using Mozilla Firefox as your web browser. If not, download and install it from mozilla.org.
   
2. Once you have Firefox, make sure the Bookmarks Toolbar is enabled. Check this on the View > Toolbars menu. If it's enabled, you should see a toolbar right beneath the address bar with some icons. Look at the screen in this picture right underneath the web page address bar. The toolbar with the red dinosaur is the Bookmarks Toolbar.
   
3. Next, drag the following link onto a blank space on the toolbar:
   Categories: ';for(var i=0;i 0){a+=', ';}if (checkplus=='-1'){a+=''+tr[i]+'';}else {var chat='';var plus=tr[i].split(' ');for(var q=0;q'+tr[i]+'';}}a+='';prompt('Copy this code, press OK, then paste to your blog entry:',a);})()">Blogger Categories
   
4. In the code box below, replace my blog's URL with your own. If your address is joeschmoe.blogspot.com, look in the box for matthewsheffield.blogspot.com (it's in there twice way over on the right side of the box). Erase my URL and put yours in the box. Make sure to use no spaces.
5. Click inside the text box, press Control+A to select all the text. Then copy it to the clipboard with Control+C.
6. Finally, right-click on the icon you made in step 3, choose Properties. Erase everything in the Location box. Paste in the text you copied in step 5. Press OK.
   

Using Blogger Categories

1. Write up your posting. When you're finished, press the "Edit HTML" button.
   
2. Click inside the editing box, then move the cursor to the end of the file. Press the "Blogger Categories" button on the Bookmarks Toolbar.
3. Follow the instructions on the box to assign one or more categories to your posting. Make sure to copy the code you get to the clipboard.
4. Once the box is gone, press Control+V to paste in your category code. Push the "Compose" button to make sure everything is good. Publish as normal.

Code Box
javascript:(function(){var a='';var c=prompt('Enter the category you would like to assign this entry to. \n\nSpaces are OK. Separate multiple categories with a comma and space:','');var theSplit=/\W?,\W?/g;var tr=c.split(theSplit);a+='<div class="\'category\'"><br />Categories: ';for(var i=0;i<tr.length;i++){var checkplus="tr[i].indexOf('"> 0){a+=', ';}if (checkplus=='-1'){a+='<a href="http://not-a-real-namespace/\" as_q="" bl_url="matthewsheffield.blogspot.com&scoring=" rel="\'tag\'">'+tr[i]+'</a>';}else {var chat='';var plus=tr[i].split(' ');for(var q=0;q<plus.length;q++){chat+=plus[q];if href="\'http://search.blogger.com/?as_q=" bl_url="matthewsheffield.blogspot.com&scoring=" rel="\'tag\'">'+tr[i]+'</a>';}}a+='</div>';prompt('Copy this code, press OK, then paste to your blog entry:',a);})()

Technical Info

1. Blogger doesn't immediately update its search database. Therefore, your most recent postings will take a little while to show up in the categories list.
   
2. If you haven't updated your blog for a while, your blog may not be indexed by Google's software.
   
3. For best results, make the words you use for categories just a bit different from the words you use in your postings.
   
4. My category hack also will make Technorati tags for any categories you create.
   
5. Tip of the hat to "A Consuming Experience" for the basis of this code.
   

UPDATE 2006-07-11: I notice several comments on this post which I didn't see since I don't have time to check it repeatedly. If you want help, drop me an email!

Categories: blog help

Tracking Buzz with Blog Search Tools

One of the nicest features of two of the blog search engines is their ability to help you keep track of how much usage a particular word or URL is getting. Both Ice Rocket and BlogPulse offer this feature. Since blog search engines are still far away from catching up to the millions of blogs that are out there, the results you'll get when clicking the "trend" link vary quite widely.

At this point, Blogpulse's trend tool is better for three reasons: 1) it allows you to go further back into the past (six months vs. three), 2) by clicking specific points on the graph, you can view blog postings for that particular day, and 3) you can compare up to three different search terms and have them show up on your graph.

This last point is best illustrated by the following graph which shows just how little most people care about political scandals. In my chart, I searched Blogpulse for the last six months for the terms "downing street memo," "cindy sheehan," and "hurricane katrina."


Categories: blogpulse, icerocket, buzz, research, blog help

NYT to Bill Readers for Columnists

Despite the enormous popularization of blogging and other public media, the New York Times bucked the trend yesterday with an announcement that it will start charging readers a fee to read the articles of its opinion columnists.

In all honesty, when I first heard the news, I thought it was some sort of joke. Surely the Times wouldn't do something so stupid, especially after seeing the Wall Street Journal became a virtual nonentity online. The NYT's move is especially bizarre considering that since the Journal became a total subscriber site in the late 90s, it's been gradually moving toward freer content through the creation of OpinionJournal.com, periodic free subscription programs, and a recent campaign to free some articles which may be of interest to bloggers.

Sure, some people will be dumb enough to register for the program. But most people, especially those who have no idea who the likes of Tom Friedman or Paul Krugman are, certainly will not. That's because to most people, an opinion slinger is far less valuable than the stuff he or she writes. People develop relationships with columnists, it's true, but only after they've done so with their writing.

Categories: new york times, web business

Rice Tops Poll of Iowa GOPers

From the Quad-City Times:

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is a surprising top choice for president among Iowa Republicans, according to a poll to be released today — more than two years before the state's first-in-the-nation caucuses.

Among 400 Republicans who said they are likely to attend the 2008 caucuses, Rice received the backing of 30.3 percent. U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona was second in the survey with 16 percent, and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani received support from 15.3 percent. Roughly 20 percent were undecided.

Categories: republicans, 2008

Google Enters Blog Search Sweepstakes

The crowded blog search space may soon contract now that Google has debuted its Blog Search service. Like competing services Technorati, Feedster, Blogpulse, and Ice Rocket, the database relies on site notification rather than crawling. Like Feedster and Ice Rocket, Google's index uses RSS feeds as its data source.

Google's entry is still beta quality but in some informal testing, I found it had picked up a number of blogs which its competitors had ignored. Things are about to get even more interesting as blog searching becomes increasingly sophisticated. I wonder which Google competitor will die first?

Categories: web business, research

Big News from Oracle

It looks Oracle is feeling the pressure from open source databases.

Categories: databases, oracle

Costas Refuses to Do Show about Holloway Case

It's been a while since I last posted here (so busy with work), but I thought I'd take time to note that Bob Costas who's been guest-hosting the "Larry King Live" show on CNN refused to host a show about the non-news event of the missing white girl Natalee Holloway.

Kudos to Costas for taking a stand against news trivialization.

CAIR to Launch Anti-terrorism Ad Campaign

Coming to a TV near you, according to Reuters:

American Muslims have launched an advertising campaign to denounce acts of terrorism after bombers believed to be British Muslims killed at least 54 people in attacks on London.

"Any effort by terrorists to hide their criminal activities under the mask of religious piety is being categorically and unequivocally rejected by mainstream Muslims," said Parvez Ahmed, chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

He said the television ad, which will air nationwide by July 19, is an attempt to detach Islam from the "heinous" acts of a few Muslims.

Police believe the attacks are linked to al Qaeda, the Islamic militant group behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and the Madrid train bombings last year.

"Backlash is a concern ... but it's not our main motive," said CAIR spokeswoman Rabiah Ahmed. "Our main motivation lies with making sure our position is clear where Islam stands on terrorism."

The Admission That Wasn't

Doing a bit of catch-up on the Plame Game, I came across the beginnings of a web firestorm (see here, here, here, here, and here) about an apparent admission from Joe Wilson that his wife wasn't undercover at the time Robert Novak divulged Plame's occupation.

At issue is the following exchange Wilson had with Wolf Blitzer on CNN:

BLITZER: But the other argument that's been made against you is that you've sought to capitalize on this extravaganza, having that photo shoot with your wife, who was a clandestine officer of the CIA, and that you've tried to enrich yourself writing this book and all of that.

What do you make of those accusations, which are serious accusations, as you know, that have been leveled against you.

WILSON: My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity.

BLITZER: But she hadn't been a clandestine officer for some time before that?

WILSON: That's not anything that I can talk about. And, indeed, I'll go back to what I said earlier, the CIA believed that a possible crime had been committed, and that's why they referred it to the Justice Department.

She was not a clandestine officer at the time that that article in Vanity Fair appeared. And I have every right to have the American public know who I am and not to have myself defined by those who would write the sorts of things that are coming out, being spewed out of the mouths of the RNC...

One reading of this is that taken by John Podhoretz at National Review's Corner:

Here is Joseph Wilson himself, talking to Wolf Blitzer on CNN today: “My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity.” Read that again. Now reflect on the fact that there has been an ongoing investigation FOR TWO YEARS conducted, we were breathlessly and rather constantly told in the weeks surrounding the initial controversy, on the basis that the White House and reporters OUTED A CLANDESTINE AGENT. Now we know. She wasn’t. Not then.

As smarmy and self-aggrandizing as Joe Wilson is (what normal human being would put his name on a book called "The Politics of Truth"?), he's not so stupid as to completely undercut everything he's been yapping about for two years now. Obviously, he meant to say that his wife was no longer "under cover" the moment Creator's Syndicate released Bob Novak's column which mentioned her. I hope the bloggers who misinterpreted Wilson in this instance will correct the record.

Thankfully, Wilson's ill-deserved and over-utilized fame will soon be coming to an end as USA Today and the New York Times report that 1) Plame likely was not "covert agent" covered under the law administration critics accuse Rove and others of violating, 2) Rove heard about Plame from Novak and other journalists.

UPDATE 3:48, Podhoretz corrects the record, mostly.

Hillary Clinton, Wire Services, and Pixelated Sex

Wire services are very useful as clearinghouses of information. They're often good at breaking down complex situations and making them easier to understand for people who haven't been following the story. Sometimes, though, the simplification goes too far.

Such is the case with the AP's and Reuters's reporting about a controversy that's errupted over the popular video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. At issue is whether or not GTA's creator, Rockstar Games deliberately included (disabled) pornographic minigames that can be unlocked through downloading a minor hack of one of the PC version of the game's files.

After word got out of the PC hack (a PlayStation2 version soon followed), various people started getting involved including the video game industry's ratings body, the Entertainment Software Ratings Board. Next to step up was Senator Hillary Clinton who sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission asking it to investigate Rockstar.

In her FTC letter, the senator used the correct language to describe the situation. Reporting on Clinton's missive, however, the AP and Reuters were overly generic. While nothing the reporters said was false, it was misleading.

From the AP report:

Clinton, D-N.Y., is asking the Federal Trade Commission to probe how users of the game can access "graphic pornographic and violent content" for the game from the Internet.

Of course "access ... from the Internet" can mean a variety of things from third-party modules that can be downloaded (such as the infamous and short-lived Nude Raider mods) to unlocking disabled game features.

Reuters reporter Peter Kaplan phrased his story in more mysterious tones:

Clinton asked the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to investigate the origins of a downloadable modification that allows simulated sex in the personal computer version of one of the most popular and controversial video games in history.

This is all true, but Kaplan gave no hint as to "the origins" of the game patches, or even a statement from their creator, a Dutch individual going by the name PatrickW, despite the fact that he has an official statement about the patches on the front page his web site:

All the contents of this mod was [sic] already available on the original disks. Therefor the scriptcode, the models, the animations and the dialogs by the original voice-actors were all created by RockStar. The only thing I had to do to enable the mini-games was toggling a single bit in the main.scm file. (Of course it was not easy to find the correct bit). The Nude models that are used as a bonus in the Quick action version of the mod, were also already present on the original disk.
But all this material is completely inaccesible in an unmodded version of the game. It can therefor not be considered a cheat, easter-egg or hidden feature. But is most probably just leftover material from a gameplay idea that didn't make the final release. I would really like to stress that this material is only accessible after willfully applying the hot coffee mod (or something similar) to the game.

In the end, PatrickW will most likely to be proven correct. The idea that the ESRB should monitor and rate disabled and hidden code within games is absurd. Still, though, if the bad publicity continues for Rockstar, the company may very well pull the current version of GTA San An, even though Clinton's attempt to moderate her image will likely increase the game's sales among people who somehow think that polygon sex is kewl.

Va. Governor's Race Still the Same

I'm not a big follower of my state's politics, but do occasionally like to peek in on the electoral battles, especially since this year, Virginia is one of only two states with a governor's race.

According to the latest Rasmussen poll(a company whose record I'm not sure is entirely reliable), Republican Jerry Kilgore leads Democrat Tim Kaine by the same margin he did a month ago, though both candidates have gained a point. Kilgore is up 47 to 41.

The Anatomy of a Screwup

In a fascinating post, Ed Bott follows the story of how an anonymously sourced item speculating that Microsoft was in negotiations to buy adware company Claria (the maker of the Gator program) morphed on the web into an outright claim from the Boing Boing blog that the deal was done.

Demographics and Democrats

PoliPundit spots a Washington Times article claiming that interstate migration patterns are helping increase the population of Republican-leaning states, thereby increasing their clout in the electoral college. He files it under the "demographics-are-bad-for-Democrats" department which is somewhat premature. The ensuing discussion among the site's commenters (revolving around the question of who is migrating, liberals to the conservative states or conservatives seeking ideologically friendlier climes) is worth reading, though as yet, no one's pointed out that the article PoliPundit linked was written by Donald Lambro who is notorious in Washington for being as overly upbeat on Republicans' chances as the New York Times is on Democrats'.

On November 6, 2000 (article not online), Lambro claimed that California was "clearly in play" in the presidential election the next day and stated that Oregon, Maine, and Iowa "were leaning toward Mr. Bush." Bush lost all three.

Demographics are important, no question, but good strategy, the issue climate and candidate effectiveness are more of a factor on elections in my opinion.