Free At Last

The New York Times is throwing in the towel on "TimesSelect," their two-year experiment with pay-per-view for their opinion pages.

According to a "Dear NYTimes.com Readers" letter on the (free) opinion page, Vivian Schiller, Senior Vice President & General Manager for NYTimes.com wrote,

Since we launched TimesSelect in 2005, the online landscape has altered significantly. Readers increasingly find news through search, as well as through social networks, blogs and other online sources. In light of this shift, we believe offering unfettered access to New York Times reporting and analysis best serves the interest of our readers, our brand and the long-term vitality of our journalism. We encourage everyone to read our news and opinion – as well as share it, link to it and comment on it.

In reality, for every subscriber to TimesSelect, there was probably one reader or blogger who went around the gate and posted the material for free on other websites or excerpted enough of the articles for blog commenting as to render the pay site pointless.

So starting tomorrow, Maureen Dowd, Thomas L. Friedman, Frank Rich, Gail Collins, Paul Krugman, David Brooks, Bob Herbert and Nicholas D. Kristof and all the rest will be liberated from their purgatory and will no longer rely on the kindness of strangers for getting their word out to the electronic masses.

Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof. (Still free.)