January 2010

This item from Server Side:

NYmag says that the NYTimes is set to start charging for its online content in the next few weeks. Supporting some of my speculation is this bit: "Apple's tablet computer is rumored to launch on January 27, and sources speculate that Sulzberger will strike a content partnership for the new device, which could dovetail with the paid strategy."

So we go from "free on the internet" on a general purpose computer (except its not "free" because the Times has always had a sign-up requirement and its pages are chockablock with ads and "rich media" sales tools, aka intrusive popups) to pay-as-you-go on some obnoxious Kindle-like tablet manufactured by Apple and probably DRM'ed out the wazoo. Couldn't happen to two better companies.

I subscribe to Salon but will probably pass on the Times because it isn't trustworthy (Judith Miller's fictional "weapons of mass destruction" reporting, the paper's general cheerleading for the Iraq and other elective wars, or, for a more up-to-the-minute example, yesterday's poorly fact-checked article on tech company IPOs, and on and on). Didn't subscribe to their columnists when they tried the experiment of putting them behind a for-pay firewall: getting weaned off Maureen Dowd was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

This is a classic Thomas Friedman quote, from that New York magazine article:

Friedman recently told me by phone. "What was coming to me anecdotally from my travels was the five worst words that as a columnist you ever want to hear: 'I used to read you before you went behind the wall.'"

Uh, Tom, that's eleven words. A reader's subscription dollars would be better spent on an honest non-fool such as Salon's Glenn Greenwald.

Having suffered Bill Murchison's breezy, empty newspaper editorials as a Dallas resident many years ago, enjoyed reading this Firedoglake takedown comparing him to Dr. Smith from the old Lost in Space TV show--for the use of self-satisfied alliterations, among other irritants ("Come along, you bubble-headed booby").

Murchison has written an article about how he prefers good writing to bad writing. He starts this article with a first sentence that he seems quite proud of, something Classic along the lines of “Call me Ishmael” or similar. Unfortunately it reads rather more like “Ishmael is the call-me I go by, old bean!” Or something:

Can’t stand to watch the English language’s losing encounter with the culture of who-cares-anyway?

To which the most common answer would probably be, “what the hell does that mean?” A more sensible answer would be, “fuck you and stop bothering me,” because that would not encourage Murchison to explain himself. Which he does, painfully and at length. His point, such as it is, is that he disagrees with a professor who wrote a book arguing that, in his paraphrase, “English, like a turbulent stream, is dynamic: always refreshing itself with new modes and models and images.” He takes exception.

So what about all this, then? Has Lynch got us dogmatic dinosaurs dead to rights? Not quite, I think. English is dynamic. Still, we can’t let the matter drop just there. The notion of language as a bulletin board for faddists needs no new friends. I fear it has too many already.

Dear Lord, someone gave Dr. Smith a Townhall column. This is a bubbling brew of barbarous bullshit, a craptastic collection of vertiginous verbiage!

Before the internet you were a captive audience for local media monopolies and their pet intellectuals--Firedoglake doesn't emphasize enough that Murchison isn't just "a wingnut" but a decades-long columnist for the Dallas Morning News.