Posts tagged new york times
“ Flea markets proliferate a volume of goods needing to be sold and people who are hungry — emotionally and aesthetically — to sort out the meaning of life.”
That’s Michael Prokopow, a history professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design University in Toronto, talking about flea markets in The New York Daily News (just kidding, it’s from the Times.) Prokopow teaches a course called “Stuff,” where he analyzes the importance of things and their meanings to us. Now, I’m torn on a subject like this. I LOVE stuff. But is further clarity in this often confusing world found in schoolyard-stand selling ramps and artisnal cream cheese and vintage sun dresses? Call me a cynic, a natural-born hater, but a flea market’s just an outdoor store. I love to shop. I love eating food while shopping. I love eating food while shopping outside when it’s warm and sunny. I dream of an adulthood filled with 8 am yoga class, a Cafe Americano and a trip to the farmer’s market, where I go home with $85 worth of groceries to last me until Monday night (I’m not quite there.) But I try to resist the idea that shops, selling things usually at a high markup, usually things we don’t necessarily need, help people figure out their purpose here on earth. There is a very fine line between the bargain-hunting, this-old-typewriter-will-improve-my-life way of thinking and Hoarders. And didn’t ya’ll see Fight Club?
-KH
[NYT, the20newyork]
"The Four Kinds of NYT Headlines" Is Four Kinds of Awesome
From Alex Leo comes a magnificent analysis of just how the Times is able to come up with perfect vague-yet-utterly-pretentious headline. My favorite is “The Here’s a Question We’re Not Going to Answer” one. Why? I’m not going to tell you.
-DM
(via thepoliticalnotebook)
“ Bloomberg thinks he’s stopping people from smoking. He’s just turning them onto loosies.”
So the New York Times just discovered the sale of “loosies”—and that’s one happy seller, Lonnie Warner, aka Loosie Lonnie, who illegally sells cigarettes (mostly Newports) by the pack and by the single smoke on the streets of Manhattan. With cigarette prices up, and despite there being fewer and fewer places for a person to smoke, the sale of loosies has grown. It’s grown beyond the usual bodega and late-night subway where I’ve seen loosies dominate. Warner said he usually makes between $120 to $150 a day, relentlessly selling despite being arrested over fifteen times. His girlfriend complained that he mutters “Newports” in his sleep.
-KH
[NYT, the20newyork]
Monday, Monday, Gotta Get Down on Monday. The Times published one of the oddest editorials I’ve ever seen in yesterday’s paper. It was about the sadness of Sunday nights, when you’re staring down the barrel of Monday morning and all the drudgery of the work week. It’s a three paragraph piece that reads like a Comp 101 essay. And it totally ignores a large sector of the population that works on weekends—they might be pretty psyched for Sunday evening to roll around.
-KH
[NYT]
I have to go the complete opposite way on this. I love that this little piece showed up in an unsigned editorial. It reads like someone posted something to the wrong Tumblr account, realized their mistake, and then walked away trying to act real casual.
-JN
“ Is it going to be done by the kind of people who value the quality of the New York Times reporting and opinion and analysis? No, I don’t think so. It’ll be mostly high-school kids and people who are out of work.”
-DM
[Forbes via Felix Salmon]
New York Times Fights Against Paywall Loopholes It Established Last week, we told you that the new paywall at The New York Times website was meaningless because the site will basically allow unrestricted access if you come from Twitter or Facebook. Now The Times is attempting to quash a Twitter feed that was set up specifically to dodge the paywall. I promise you, this will be only the first example of the Times trying to enforce a paywall that they themselves made virtually unenforceable. And you wonder why they hemorrhage money.
-DM
[Forbes]
How To Break Through Paywall? Buy A Car.
Azi Paybarah received an email from the NYTimes.com alerting him of the way to continue reading the online content for free once the much-discussed paywall begins. Apparently, Lincoln—which already have so many of those big ads along the side of the page—is offering some readers (perhaps those special ones Lincoln would like to engage enough to buy a big car) a free subscription through the end of the year. Here it is from Azi:
Dear NYTimes.com reader,
As a frequent reader of NYTimes.com, you’ve demonstrated an uncommon interest in a wide variety of today’s most important topics. This makes you anything but average. In fact, it can’t help but make you “smarter” — just the kind of person we at Lincoln want to engage.
Though NYTimes.com will soon begin charging for unlimited access*, Lincoln is offering you a free digital subscription for the remainder of 2011. Enjoy all that NYTimes.com has to offer every day — investigative news and special reports, videos, blogs and more. It’s all yours at no charge, compliments of Lincoln.
Take advantage of this limited-time offer** to receive free, unlimited access to NYTimes.com.
No word on how many loyal readers have received a similar email. I know I haven’t, but maybe the Times already knows I drive a Toyota.
-KH
(via nbcnewyork)
The New York Times Paywall Is Utterly Meaningless.
There’s a big to-do today about the New York Times going back to charging readers for online content. You get 20 free articles from the Times every month. After that, they come callin’ for your money or your kneecaps. But CNN notes an incredible loophole: “Readers who reach online Times articles through links from search engines, blogs and social media will be able to access those individual articles, even if they have reached the 20-article monthly limit.” That basically renders the paywall meaningless. Most people stumble upon Times articles through those three portals anyway. And if you do happen to hit the 20-post limit, even a dimwit could easily use those guidelines to circumvent the wall. Which means that, like TimesSelect, this thing is doomed to fail. In fact, it’s already a failure.
-DM
[The 20 New York, CNN, Azi Paybarah, Brian Ries, Anthony De Rosa]
“ When I become mayor, you know what I’m going to spend my first year doing? I’m going to have a bunch of ribbon-cuttings tearing out your [expletive] bike lanes.”
Wow. Congressman Anthony Weiner hates bike lines as much as he hates suggestive statues—and has no problem telling the Mayor of New York City how he feels. The quote ran in a New York Times profile on Janette Sadik-Khan, the city’s transit commissioner and alternative-transit proponent who has placed questionable bike lines all over the five boroughs.
-KH
