Noticed something interesting about Technorati’s “top searches this hour” list: ever since the New York Times started its “TimesSelect” program and hid all its opinion columnists behind their paywall, the names of their columnists, and sometimes the titles of their columns, have been clogging up the top ten. Today, six of the top ten searches, in fact, are on Times’ columnists names, and a seventh is on the title of Maureen Dowd’s latest column, “Dancing in the Dark.”
The Times has made a big mistake in taking their most popular content out of the conversation, and the network is routing around the error. People are turning to bloggers, figuring they’ll find the gist or the text of their favorite columnists in the blogosphere, and their prayers are being answered. Bloggers are posting the full text of Times columns; I wonder what kind of traffic jumps they’re experiencing. And I wonder if the New York Times is now planning to unleash its lawyers on them.
Last summer, during the course of a breakfast meeting with Thomas Friedman (which led to a great column by him embracing Andrew Rasiej’s campaign), he asked me what he should do with his Times column on the web once it moved behind the paywall. I said, “Start a blog. There’s a huge conversational tail that follows every one of your columns now, that’s happening all over the net. If you have a blog, you’ll draw a lot of it onto your page, and if the Times is smart, they’ll use the fact that people are spending more time on your page to sell more online ads.”
Friedman liked the idea, but admitted that he didn’t think he had the time to do a blog right. It looks like he’s dipping his toes into the water with his “Talking World Affairs” page, which is unfortunately only available to TimesSelect subscribers. Here’s how he introduced it:
Welcome to Talking World Affairs. I’m inviting readers to submit comments on, queries about and contrary views to this week’s columns. I’ll respond to some of them regularly online. I get a lot of e-mail, so please don’t be upset if yours isn’t answered.
I’ll be looking for quality comments and criticism, and I’ll try to provide quality answers. But if you’re just looking to vent, I would direct you to the letters to the editor section.
I may occasionally be doing some blogging as events arise, although my columns will remain the primary platform through which I express my opinions. But, like everything with the Web, we’ll experiment as we go along. Having declared that the world is flat, and having long been a believer in the adage that all of us are smarter than one of us, I felt it was time that I flattened my column as well, and made it a little more interactive.
This is a start, but it’s hardly enough. Posting one question from a reader a day (in a really dorky layout, I might add) and answering it is hardly the way to build a community online. If “all of us are smarter than one of us,” Friedman should open up his page and let a thousand flowers bloom.