Why you should pay for the New York Times

So as of March 28, my favorite past-time and yours (to judge from what I can infer of my readership) is about to get expensive.  No more critiquing the New York Times for free.  It’s gonna cost at least $15 a month.

That’s to read it online and on your mobile phone.  It’s $25 to read it also on your iPad, and $35 for “all access.”  The oddity of the strip-club-style-price-ascension scheme notwithstanding, I’m going to make an argument you should pay for the Times (even though we can all keep reading 20 articles a month for free).

The Times is the journalism world’s valedictorian that is also hot and good at sports — the do-all, take-all that inspires as much consternation as adoration.  Of course,the hot valedictorian graduates after four years, and the rest of us mortals never get to relish in watching his/her undoing.  The Times has been around 140-or-something years, with a long record of excellence and also a rather fat file of mistakes.

You don’t have to look too hard to find those mistakes — but the bigger point is, you don’t have to go too far to find people discussing them.  The poor coverage of a Texas rape case became a (literal) Internet cause.  Criticism about Nick Kristof takes up almost as much space as he does every week.  This is all good — for journalism, for the world, for the marketplace of ideas.

But in reciting the litany of Times failures, it’s easy to forget its successes.  And in some cases, “success” is the wrong word, because the Times is more than successful:  It is necessary.

Among the stories that Times has brought us that are absolutely critical for their time — and, indeed, for generations to come:  The Pentagon Papers comes to mind. But, more recently, Anthony Shadid’s reporting from the Middle East. Dexter Filkins reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan. Stephanie Strom’s reporting on the world of philanthropy. David Rohde’s reporting (and risk-taking) in Afghanistan. Adam Liptak’s fascinating work on differing justice mechanisms in democracies. Sheri Fink’s moving and meticulous investigation into the death of nursing home patients in New Orleans.*

Remember that story about how radio and TV shows used ex-Pentagon officials as “analysts” — who ended up arguing in favor of the war in Iraq… and oh, by the way, had financial interests in the companies that won contracts to fight it or work there? You probably read it aggregated somewhere, or caught some television discussion about the issue sparked by the story — but that was Times’ reporter David Barstow’s work. Remember the reflexive fear about the toxic chemicals in stuff (including medicine) we have manufactured in China? That was the Times. The corruption behind cover-ups of fatal railway accidents? The Times. Illegal domestic wire-tapping by the Bush Administration? The Times. The expose on US Treasury’s terrorism finance tracking program? The Times…

And that’s the easy list: I’m just picking off the Pulitzer winners.

This work isn’t done cheaply. I’m not just talking about the reporting and editing, which costs real money. In some cases, I’m talking about the lawyering: In addition to giving us stellar reporting, the Times has been at the center of legal cases that have literally helped establish the freedom of the press. Against whom? The government.

“It’s $180 a year!” you say. That’s $15 a month. Three bucks more than a movie in Manhattan. The price of three small lattes at Starbucks. The tax on those hot new kitten heels…

Count the number of things in your house, in your diet, in your daily routine that you unnecessarily blow $15 a month on. It’s also cheaper than the print paper, which I’m pretty sure most of us found a way to read back when subscribing was the only way to read the Times.

“I can just read the same story later,” you say. No, you can’t: That’s an illusion that the Internet has offered you. You can read someone else’s summary of the Times’ reporting, sure. But that’s not the same thing as getting it from the source — which you media critics are always griping at us journalists about. And here’s the other thing: You can’t read the story later if the Times can’t afford to do the work in the first places.

But if you need another reason to suck it up and give $15 a month to the Times, here’s one, from Chris Hedges (who, I should not, is not writing here in defense of the Times — where he once worked — but is instead taking on the Huffington Post in a must-read about lies an empire of free labor relies on):

Good reporters, like good copy editors or good photographers, who must be paid and trained for years while they learn the trade, are becoming as rare as blacksmiths. Stories on popular sites are judged not by the traditional standards of journalism but by how many hits they receive, how much Internet traffic they generate, and how much advertising they can attract. News is irrelevant. Facts mean little. Reporting is largely nonexistent. No one seems to have heard of the common good.

Subscribing to the Times — or to your local newspaper, or to other media outlets you think do important and needed work — is not your usual financial transaction. You’re not trading $15 for $15 worth of goods. You’re supporting an enterprise, one that sometimes disappoints you and sometimes provides a service that’s literally impossible to put a price on. You’re helping to provide a public good — journalism — at a time when it’s in the interest of the powerful, everywhere, to see it die.

So get out your debit card and sign up.

*Don’t try to tell me ProPublica funded it. They helped, yes — a nice model to try out, surely — but the Times put resources into it too.