NY Times columnist hates subscription wall

Posted by Martin Stabe on 13 June 2006 at 18:22
Tags: Journalism, Online, United States

New York Times star columnist Thomas Friedman hates having his columns behind the TimesSelect subscription wall, which makes his newspapers’ comment pages accessible to paying subscribers only.

“It pains me enomrously because it’s cut me off from a lot, a lot of people, espeically because I have a lot of people who reading me overseas, like in India and whatnot, and so I hate it,” Friedman said in an interview conducted at last night’s Webby awards by MediaBistro, posted on YouTube, and highlighted on the blog of US new media columnist Steve Outing.

But the columnist also acknowledged that someone had to pay for his jetsetting approach to reporting on globalisation: “On the other hand, we have to make money somehow and the traditional dead-tree way of doing it doesn’t really provide enough to go forward, and the bits and bytes aren’t there yet either, so that’s our problem.”

Tags: Journalism, Online, United States