Congeries of cross connected concepts
Fauxpolitik has an interesting theory about the fading of the NY Times. Beyond the stunning loss of credibility, the fact that the NY Times hides articles more than a week old behind a registration wall decreases the number of websites that link to the NY Times online. In turn, because Google and search engines to a lesser extent rate search results based on links, when people search for information they do not find the NY Times. Information that’s not on the Internet is increasingly irrelevant and information not found via a search engine is largely irrelevant as well. The overall result is the NY Times fading in to trivia.
The author of this interesting theory wonders why the NY Times doesn’t open up its archive and charge for new stuff. I wonder if the NY Times simply doesn’t want people trolling through its archives and providing endless examples of the paper contradicting itself. I suspect that the Lexis-Nexus money is a big factor in the decision but I still wonder how much the fear of accountability weighs in.
