Of all the ‘heavyweight’ daily newspapers in the UK, its seems invariably to be the Independent that is most ambivalent about bloggers and blogging.
While the dear old Grauniad offers near enough an open house on its content, which is why its probably only second to the Beeb in terms of generating comment in the UK blogosphere, and others, like the Times, give you a few weeks open access to content before it disappears into the ‘pay to view’ depths of its archives, the Indy solidly insists on sticking most of its content directly into its subscription service, especially most of its op-ed content which is likely to generate most commentary – and most free publicity as well.
So, I was pleasantly surprised to find nothing less than a full page spread by our very own Tim Worstall in today’s media section of the dead-tree, highlighting some of the best of the work/professional bloggers our there, including Dr Crippen, Random Acts of Reality and PC Copperfield (link to whom you’ll find in the blogroll to your right).
Shame the Indy couldn’t be arsed to stick it online, mind you.
Timmy Elsewhere.
There’s a piece by me in The Independent today. About blogs, of course. 12 work related blogs in fact. Talk Politics has the news on why I’m not linking to it.
Am I the only one who finds the Times’ economic model to be backwards? You can’t buy yesterday’s papers in any shop, let alone last week’s. So why charge for the old stuff? Why not put recent additions behind the firewall and make them free after two or three weeks? Sure you could read all the Times news you liked a bit late, but who wants to do that? That way the free service doesn’t cut into sales which would be my worry if I were a publisher. An archive of what your reporters and columnists said last year (especially if you have faith in their being proved right– and if you haven’t, why publish them?) would be useful for everyone. Being able to get kudos for, say, Matthew Parris being right most of the time, should sell the paper. “He was right last year; maybe he’ll do it again.” Then again they also have David Aaronovitch, a consistent arse, so it could cut both ways.
True, the Guardian gets free publicity — at the cost of no one having to buy it.
Errr… What’s this, then?
http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article334066.ece
All I can say, Martin, is it wasn’t there this morning when I posted.
Unless Tim can shed any light on things, it’s impossible to say for the moment whether the Indy were just slow in getting it online but intended to put it up anyway or whether they’re reacted to its absence being noted by the two of us. Tim may have contacted them about it for all I know at the moment.
I’ll check it on Google Analytics as soon as I’ve got the day’s stats and see if there’s been any hits from the Indy, which should provide a clue as to whether they’ve reacted to comment or not.
I think it may just be a case of the Indy’s search engine being rubbish. I only found it when I realised it was in the media section and clicked on it through the menu. I only made the effort to look carefully because I was about to post something about how silly the Indy was for not posting a story guarnateed to drive traffic to their site. I really should have been much easier to find.
Entirely off-topic, but you have to love this headline.