Mad Dog 21/21: Omission Accomplished

by Hesh Wiener

In mid-September, the New York Times began charging a fee for access to some of the material on its Web site. The sequestered content includes essays by its top political commentators, plus some sports columns and video clips. Other news providers, including publishers of the technical material you use, are watching. So are vendors with online technical libraries. For all these parties, there is much more to this story than a Web site's new revenue model. The Times is also risking its influence, the conceit that it can and should, as Mr Dooley said, comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

Martin Dooley said a lot of smart and funny things, and his words are widely quoted, often by people who have no idea who he was or what he really meant. Dooley's work was published in a number of Chicago newspapers for more than two decades beginning late in the Gay (but heterosexual) Nineties. Dooley was, however, not a real person. He was a character created by a newspaperman, Finley Peter Dunne, a voice written in a phonetic Irish brogue that filled about 700 columns, articles that were later collected into several books. Dooley's observations were not only popular in their city of origin, but also, via syndication, across the United States. They were even admired by one of targets of Dooley's barbs, Theodore Roosevelt, who, in the fullness of time, befriended Dunne.

Nobody can say what would have been the result if newspapers carrying Dooley's column charged more, even a penny more, for a full edition than one that was exactly the same but without Dooley. No press baron dared to find out. What is clear is that publishers leavened their papers with the lively work of columnists, and considered opinion pieces as much a part of a complete newspaper as the hard news and sports coverage. (At IT Jungle, this very column and those of other columnists perform exactly the same function--to go a little deeper behind an IT or business issue, or to bring some other cultural issue to your attention that affects the lives of the professional lives of the people who work in IT.)

Finley Peter Dunne: His alter ego Dooley was more widely known than the writer himself

The New York Times print edition remains in that mold, as do the offerings of other newspapers. But printed newspapers aren't what they used to be. The newspaper business is under pressure as more people get more of their news online.

During the twentieth century, newspapers had two big threats and one small threat to contend with. Radio and television, with their immediacy and free availability (once the audience bought receivers) gained influence at the expense of the press. But neither medium gives the audience the volume of information, the choice of content or control over timing, the way a printed newspaper does. So, while the newspaper business had to adjust, it did not have to deal with a direct challenge from broadcast media. Newspapers did lose a key role in suburban and rural areas, where radio so effectively reaches the morning commuter, but gained power in the largest cities, where the morning paper remains a favorite companion of passengers on public transportation systems.

The Internet offers in-depth coverage, gives the audience unmatched choice of content, and freedom to manage timing. Urban commuters remain a key audience for the press, but that will change if wireless Internet access becomes free or cheap, if public transit systems get signal repeaters, and if portable receivers become a feature of cell phones and portable media players. A big change could be coming to exurbia, where portable gadgets that can retrieve customized news and read it out loud would give the Internet a chance to compete with radios.

So, it's no wonder that newspaper publishers, who generally stuck to their own medium as radio and television became entrenched, see a successful presence on the Internet as a vital opportunity and, possibly, an activity that will be necessary for their survival.

If the Internet usurps some of the roles played by newspapers, the Times' decision to sequester an important part of what makes it unique could backfire. The main news stories of the moment are available from many sources in the Web, as they are in print. While the New York Times has a unique and distinguished roster of news reporters, so does the Washington Post, which is fully available at no cost on the Internet, and so do many other newspapers.

By taking its most prominent essayists out of the general context, the Times created another medium, the Paid Content Times. Newspaper folk are quite familiar with the effects of taking material out of context. In fact, they are famous for taking even Dooley's words out of context, completely changing their meaning.

The press, in Dooley's opinion, was not the bastion of social reformers who afflict and comfort as appropriate, but an establishment that was far too full of its own grandeur. The full quote from Dooley, from which so many press people, acting like mendacious theatrical press agents pulling a few pretty words from an ugly review, is this:

Th' newspaper does ivrything f'r us. It runs th' polis force an' th' banks, commands th' milishy, conthrols th' ligislachure, baptizes th' young, marries th' foolish, comforts th' afflicted, afflicts th' comfortable, buries th' dead an' roasts thim aftherward. They ain't annything it don't turn its hand to fr'm explaining th' docthrine iv thransubstantiation to composin' saleratus biskit. Ye can get anny kind iv information ye want to in ye'er fav'rite newspaper about ye'ersilf or annywan else. What th' Czar whispered to th' Imp'ror Willum whin they were alone, how to make a silk hat out iv a wire matthress, how to settle th' coal sthrike, who to marry, how to get on with ye'er wife whin ye're married, what to feed th' babies, what doctor to call whin ye've fed thim as directed -- all iv that ye'll find in th' pa-apers.

Even Mr. Dooley's greatest fans, including Theodore Roosevelt, would hardly have been surprised. Lifting words and using them in ways their speaker never intended has been a common if ignoble operating procedure of media since the days of scribes, and, before that, a widely used ploy of minstrels, jongleurs, and criers, to say nothing of campaigning politicians and other common gossips.

Teddy Roosevelt: He was Dooley impressed with the earthy, provocative humor of Mr Dooley's columns

It is, then, perhaps fitting that the Times' columnists have had their work lifted from the context of the newspaper's Select offering and posted in quite a few newsgroups and on blogs. Yes, the Times' readers are no better than the press lords who run the paper. They are a pack of thieves.

Shortly after the Times moved its columnists into Select, one Web wiseacre started a site called Never Pay Retail. It tells visitors how to find the most prominent Select columns for free. Well, actually it does this only some of the time. In order to keep the attentions of the Times' lawyers to a minimum, Never Pay Retail does not tell visitors how to find purloined columns it does not list. One way to participate in the systematic violation of the Times' intellectual property rights that works pretty well is to use a search engine pointed at blogs. Most days, postings of popular Times Select material can be found within a couple hours of publication through Technorati or Google Blog Search. Just look for "Frank Rich" or "Paul Krugman" or whoever your favorite columnist happens to be and you can see the tasty fruit of crime on display. The search results may change as blog content blinks on and off, very possibly in response to emails or phone calls from the night shift at the New York Times legal department.

This unseemly conduct on the part of the distinguished readership of the Times would hardly have surprised Mr. Dooley, who said he trusted everyone--but still cut the deck.