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January 19, 2006
No Feedback, Please...We're the NYTimes
The New York Times is slowly cutting email access to its columnists, according to Mickey Kaus.
Previous TimesSelect experiments deprived the paper's columnists of having their voices heard. This one threatens to deprive them of having interesting things to say in the first place. Not just bad business. Bad journalism. Columnists get tips over email! They get interesting information from like-minded souls, and interesting information from readers who despise them. The Times would give up this Webby power for a mess of Pinch pottage! Now columnists will only hear from those who've paid to be inside the paper's mainly-liberal New York-centric cocoon.I agree with Kaus on this one. When I was a reporter, my email address was public - the work email address. I still had a private account I used for private messages, but for work-related feedback, criticism, etc. - people could get in touch with me easily.
Cutting already-insulated columnists (right or left) from access to public criticism will eventually separate them too much from the people they are supposed to be trying to reach with their point of view. I hope the Times realizes this, and changes this policy. Maureen Dowd's columns are bad enough as it is - do we really need something that will make them worse?
Posted by slublog at January 19, 2006 12:00 AM
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