Paul Boutin

You’ve probably noticed that New York Times articles more than 30 days old are now inaccessible unless you pay for them. None of the old workaround URLs seem to work (and if you’ve got one, please send it to me). Dave Winer already said everything I have to say about it.

The Wall Street Journal has always charged for online content aside from its opinion essays and a few loose pieces, such as Walt Mossberg’s Personal Tech column. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Mossberg’s clout in his field continues to grow, while his WSJ colleagues are unknown to my Web-addled friends. It’s a loss for both the Journal and would-be readers, given the quality and timeliness of their reporting on much bigger issues than which laptop to buy.

Winer and Andrew Orlowski at the Register have both done a lot of campaigning lately on the NYT’s archives and Google’s search algorithms, respectively, both of which account for a huge chunk of online traffic. Dave and Andrew don’t always agree, but they’re both right about the importance of these issues.

Orlowski’s latest observation was that Google News results merge in press releases with reported news stories. I’d noticed that myself a while back, but brushed it off with a thought I’m now kicking myself for: “Oh well, people will get what they deserve.” I make fun of people who treat the Net as the definitive source of fact, or see Google as a truth machine. But more and more of the world’s educated, connected people are going online rather than to the newsstand or library. What they do and don’t immediately find there will affect what they think and do.

The people I’ve dealt with at the NYT and Google take their role as information abiters seriously, but I hope they pay special attention to these two particular policies. They add up to removing one of the most reliable news sources online, and filling the hole with self-serving copy written by professionals who report to the Marketing department (or its governmental equivalent). The goal of a press release is nearly the opposite of news reporting.

It’s traditional (and teeth-grindingly clichÈ) to quote George Orwell at this point, but I don’t smell any intent to mislead the public. Instead I’m reminded of that line from Animal House: “Hey, you fucked up. You trusted us.”

Update:

I’ve gotten email from several people, including a few writers and one of my favorite Googlenauts. I think we agree that the issue is how to establish online conventions to instantly differentiate reporting from opinion from marketing from whatever else, so readers can at least adjust their BS detectors accordingly. Newspapers have spent over a century establishing visual conventions, e.g. the editorial page and the “Advertisement” border text. Newspapers that succeeded at this and stuck to it became the journals of record we trust more than other sources.

If there’s an online journal of record today, it’s Google, so I hope they take the lead on figuring this out. Orlowski’s articles may be barbed, but that’s because they have good points in them.