Wrote a big long policy memo today. It was suggested we needed a new policy for a particular thing. The task fell to me. I eschewed the urge to write the thing in bullet points. Sometimes bullet points work very well. The aesthetic of bullet points is ruined, however, when the explanation that goes with the bullet runs onto a second line. And the problem with writing a policy on something or other is that they often run longer than one line.
So I started “Thou shalt not.”
Or I would have if I’d thought of it at the time.
Had lunch with Brian, where we enjoyed barbecue at Moe’s. We talked of home repair, website work and company trips. For example, did you know the new New York Times paywall, which is in effect in Canada and will soon go into effect in the United States with all of it’s many tiers — You want to talk about policy memos, how many did this plan take? — but the workaround has already been found.
They say there’s $40 or $50 million invested in this paywall, and it can be defeated by four lines of javascript:
That last bit gets at the issue: You can afford to let nerds game your system. You probably want them to game your system, because they (a) are unlikely to pay, (b) generate ad revenue, and (c) are more likely to share your content than most.
The danger is when it becomes easy for non-nerds to do it. And that’s the risk of any leaky paywall — the risk that you might calibrate the holes incorrectly and let too many of your would-be subscribers through. Something like NYTClean — or the many tools that will soon follow it — could be the kind of thing that tips the balance in a way that hurts the Times.
There are pluses and minuses to this system the New York Times is putting in place, as is the case with most anything. The more I read about it, though, the more I wonder where the $40-50 million went:
The full text of the article is still visible in the page source. And as I mentioned in responding to a commenter — and as is evident to anyone who can right-click on a page and choose “Inspect Element” — the overlay is nothing more than a little CSS and Javascript.
There has to be more to this, somewhere, or that just sounds borderline criminal.
So let’s review: you can use an applet, see a small amount per month for free or surf right in from Facebook or Twitter (@nytimes is an enabler) and the paper feels as if your eyes-to-ads will be worthwhile. You can simply click View–>Source and read it directly in the code. If you are the most faithful consumers, customers of the paper, you’ll be charged.
You couldn’t write that memo in bullet points. And it has the feel of a lot of memoists working through lots of drafts.
In the comments people are leaving even more suggested hacks. Information wants to be free. The readers seem to want it that way, too.
Today I learned that big moments in journalism include Jessica Simpson photographed in her underwear for a magazine cover, Brittney Spears pregnant and the Miley Cyrus photo shoot of ill-repute and Charlie Sheen’s contrived craziness.
I interjected with Watergate and the Pentagon papers, but was rebuffed by “Those things happened before we were born.” That’s the case for me too, of course, but apparently if it is older than you it doesn’t matter. And so with this as the platform for perspective, I chose the somewhat journalism-related death of Diana (the headline was hanging on the wall nearby), the introduction of color in the New York Times and so on.
So that was fun.
And then more office work and emails and phone calls and meetings and still more emails. It doesn’t seem like it should take the full day, but somehow it does. All good, gratifying, hopefully productive and hopefully useful. That’s what we all want out of a Tuesday, no?
May your Wednesday be equally gratifying.
