Lying in Ponds

In his final column as the NYT Public Editor, Daniel Okrent stirred up quite a controversy by saying that “”Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults.” Donald Luskin describes his interactions with Mr. Okrent at great length, criticizing him for not going far enough. Bob Somerby has written articles over several days attacking Mr. Okrent on Krugman and other issues. Brendan Nyhan criticizes Andrew Sullivan on the the subject, and Jon Henke adds a comment. I’m looking forward to the Krugman-Okrent issue being taken up soon by the incoming public editor Byron Calame, as promised.

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I’m off this morning on a business trip to Troy, New York, the home of Uncle Sam. I won’t have a chance to evaluate columns while I’m there, so I’ll have to catch up over the weekend.

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Congratulations to friend of Lying in Ponds Robert Cox, who has been blogging for two years at The National Debate. He has accomplished an amazing amount in that time (e.g. the MBA) because he’s smart, passionate and relentlessly energetic.

Responding to the TimesSelect announcement , Timothy Noah at Slate asked his readers to attach a value to each of the regular New York Times columnists, and was deluged with about 1,000 replies in a few hours. He struggled to tally up a fraction of them, with the following results:

1. Paul Krugman: $6.90
2. Thomas L.Friedman: $4.10
3. Frank Rich: $3.90
4. Maureen Dowd: $3.42
5. Nicholas Kristof: $2.35
6. Bob Herbert: $1.42
7. David Brooks: $1.39
8. John Tierney: $0.31

Of course it represents a very small sample, and Mr. Noah discusses some other caveats. But it doesn’t surprise me that Slate’s left-leaning readers (as well as Noah) embrace Paul Krugman. The combination of extreme partisanship with one or more exceptional qualities such as intelligence (Krugman) or humor (Ann Coulter, Molly Ivins) seems guaranteed to generate popularity from a loyal fan base and hostile attention from dedicated opponents. Columnists who sometimes cross partisan lines when wrestling with complicated issues (Nicholas Kristof, David Brooks) tend to frustrate those on their own side of the fence, and get very little credit from those on the other side.

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Robert Cox linked to my thoughts about the future of Lying in Ponds in response to the TimesSelect announcement. In the comments, Jon Garfunkel actually offered to pay the $50/year for me, but as Bob points out, that wouldn’t help readers who couldn’t access the NYT columns.

Here’s the deal. As I said earlier, I don’t object at all to the NYT practicing capitalism by trying to translate the value of their columnists into revenue. But paying for access would change the Lying in Ponds equation by adding a new cost (in addition to the considerable time commitment) and by simultaneously reducing the significance of the results (lowering the accessibility of some of the highest-profile pundits). I could choose to not pay and lower the cost, but the signifcance of the results without any Times columnists would be even lower.

I haven’t definitely decided yet; I’ll think about it for a while. Thanks to Bob Cox and Peg Kaplan for their kind encouragement.

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Well, I thought this might happen someday:

The New York Times announced yesterday that it would offer a new subscription-based service on its Web site, charging users an annual fee to read its Op-Ed and news columnists, as the newspaper seeks ways to capitalize on the site’s popularity.

Most material on the Web site, NYTimes.com, will remain free to users, The Times said, but columnists from The Times and The International Herald Tribune will be available only to users who sign up for TimesSelect, which will cost $49.95 a year. The service will also include access to The Times’s online archives, as well as other features.

I have greatly enjoyed the time I’ve spent maintaining Lying in Ponds, but my extremely low-budget operation has depended on free online access to political columns. For that reason, I haven’t subscribed to the online Wall Street Journal, depending instead on the free OpinionJournal site. My choices are to stop evaluating the NYT columnists in September (when the change takes effect) and continue with the pundits whose columns are still free, or to just take the opportunity to retire Lying in Ponds. One argument for closing up shop is that the political situation seems frozen in place, and may be until 2009. Essentially the same handful of extreme partisans have topped the rankings for over two years now; is it worth the effort to document that fact for several more years?

Since I’ve enjoyed NYT content at no charge for so long, it would be ungenerous of me to complain about their desire to find a way to generate additional revenue from their prestigious Op-Ed page. I do however, share the concern of Steve Outing of Poynter Institute, quoted in the Boston Globe:

While he applauded the TimesSelect move overall, Outing said he thinks it’s a mistake to put the columnists behind a firewall. ”These days there are thousands of bloggers and news aggregators talking about the issues these columnists write about,” he said. ”If you put them behind a firewall, they might disappear from those discussions.”

Similar concerns are aired in a Salon article (free “site pass” required!) by Farhad Manjoo. Donald Luskin points out that the move may create a dilemma for NYT columnist Thomas Friedman.

UPDATE: Robert Cox, who has a colorful history with The New York Times, weighs in.