Boston Globe: The Link Maker … and Breaker
I’m pleased as Hubert Humphrey’s punch to be included in the list of Boston bloggers mentioned by Scott Kirsner in today’s Boston Globe, along with Dan Bricklin, John Robb, Ray Kurzweil, Jeremy Allaire, Ray Ozzie, and Bob Frankston. That’s some heady company!
At the risk of being churlish, I do feel the need to address Scott’s poking me about why I urge people to subscribe to Salon but knock the Globe for “asking users to pay for access to Globe articles once they are moved into the site’s archives.” Is it because my “instinct is usually to side with the underdog,” as Scott guesses?
Well, sure, there’s that. But also…
1. Salon needs the support. While its editor Scott Rosenberg says its finances are not nearly as shaky as some have assumed, nothing is certain in this crazy hill of beans, and we need some high-quality online magazines to succeed.
2. Newspapers have a special role. They are the bedrock of public information. They try for comprehensive coverage and they aim for a type of objectivity that lets our beliefs have some shared footing. Locking up that information makes our society stupider. (Yes, yes, I know objectivity is so pre-POMO, etc.)
3. It costs the Globe as close to nothing as humans can count for me to search their archives and look at an article. The pricing is thus unrelated to costs. Paying 5 times the price of an entire printed copy of the newspaper is waaaay too much.
4. The most important social role of a publication like a newspaper is to enable conversations. We want an informed citizenry so that we can get past “Hey, how’s it goin’?” when we talk with one another. That’s crucial to how we make social decisions and to how we come to be a community in the first place. But kicking off a conversation in public and then going to sulk in your room is just plain rude. Salon, on the other hand, makes it clear from the beginning: if you want to talk, pay your $29/year.
5. Of all the links in this blog entry, there’s only one I can guarantee will be broken in a week: the link to Scott’s article.
In a fit of irony, the Globe’s archives seem to be down this morning.
While I’m in an appending mood: “404! Page gap! 404!” is a palindrome.
Categories: Uncategorized dw
Not to be picky but…you can’t have that last exclamation point if it’s going to be a palindrome.
404! Page gap! 404
Not to be picky???? Could you get pickier than that, Mark?
Well, yeah, I guess you could complain that the initial P in “page gap” is capitalized.
As everyone since Adam has agreed, Mark, punctuation doesn’t count in palindromes, as proved by our very first palindrome: “Madam, I’m Adam”
So there!
OK. OK. Sorry!
Mark, I should have put a smiley into my response to you. I was just teasing you back. All in good fun, etc. I hope I gave no offense.
None taken, of course. My two comments had a shortage of smiley’s also. Those little emoticons are handy during written communication. I wonder how letter writers (pre – email) let each other know they were being silly, less than serious, frivolous… Do you suppose people were more attuned to subtle changes in writing style? Or were they unsubtle like Yosemite Sam – “It’s a JOKE, boy!”
Anyway, thanks for worrying that I might have missed your teasing. I did think you were making some good points in the post and should have just agreed with you that newspapers have a position in the public interest and therefore should strive to make information freely available.
I promise to make only relevant comments in the future ;-).