Why do blogs spend so much time discussing articles in the Guardian but hardly ever similiar columns from the Independent or the New Statesman?
The answer is that we can’t really link to Independent or New Statesman articles because someone is standing at the entrance asking for a quid before they will let us in.
I’d be very interested to know how successful the cover charge policy is for those two websites (to be fair to the NS they do let you see one article free each day) but one thing they have certainly achieved with their policy is to remove themselves from the networked conversations involving thousands of people across blogs.
Now the New York Times is to follow suit and is to charge $49.95 a year to read its pundits. So that will be the end of the NYT as part of the blogosphere’s discussions as they bolt the door to thousands of people interested in their material and discussing it further.
Who do they think is going to pay that?