Putting the "Me" in Media

Earlier this week, the Times announced they were canceling their "TimesSelect" service, which had previously meant that people unwilling to pay for premium content and archives would just have to go without or (GASP!!) buy a print copy of the publication. (Or, for New Yorkers, wait till after rush hour and then run through the subway cars to pick up discarded copies...)

But now Times content is ours again, including access to most of the archives, excepting 1923-1986, (presumably in a Yankees-originated plan to restrict public information about Mets World Series wins). This is more good news for those of us who are tuned to the news and link to fresh or interesting stories on a daily basis, whether we're blogmasters-general, emergent media magnates or civilians who forward links to their friends. Finally, media is working for all the "me's" out there. Should we call it "wedia"? Power to the people. Citizen journalism. Yada yada yada.

But BuzzMachine (a media blog by Jeff Jarvis) is really what inspired me to blog this story. His comment, while brief, was also laden with modern truth*:

[W]hen I stopped reading them [the Times' opinion pages] — because, what was the point, I couldn’t link to them — I quickly found that I didn’t miss them. Newspapers are, in great measure, habit and once broken, it’s hard to reestablish that behavior. So bye-bye, guys.

And so, it's the old tree falling in a forest with no one around situation with a lesson for today's media: if a story cannot be linked to, it does not exist.

And on that note, I'm pleased to announce that much of the new issue of PresenTense (Issue Three, if you're counting) is now available online, and therefore does exist.

*...which would be a good thing to have from some of our rabbis this holiday season...