Xark!

Hell, let's just give 'em the South

One of our kids had an interesting idea last week. Rather than continuing our painfully redundant national argument over bizarre Republican beliefs about science, education, sexuality, religion, economics, the environment, race and national security, why don't we just give them the South?

Rupert and the Paywall Oblivion Cliff

Got this email this morning from our friend Geoff, who works for the BBC in London.

saw you across the Times paywall this morning - it's created a little media storm here. everyone is watching VERY CLOSELY to see what their hits are going to be like for the next few weeks now. it SHOULD be a flop and Murdoch will have egg on his face.  SHOULD... right?

Here's my reply (lightly edited):

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

I really can't figure out Murdoch's play here. Then again, I haven't looked at how the Times paywall works. How much can you get for free, how is the payment taken, what are the options, etc., etc. (author's note: the reason I don't know is that I'm not sufficiently convinced of the plan's viability to even go study its details seriously). I suppose it is possible to have a pay-to-read system that's intelligent, but I just don't see that there are many "newspaper" products in the world that have sufficient uniqueness and value to succeed on that basis.