4 ms·

If the NY times hates people using their RSS feed why don't they just cut it off? It's no wonder print media is dying when you are willing to spend money on st

by tjmaxal 16y ago

If the NY times hates people using their RSS feed why don't they just cut it off? It's no wonder print media is dying when you are willing to spend money on stupid legal fights when all you really have to do is police your own policies better. This reminds me of another HN article from this week where print media was seeking all kinds of govt regulations to prop up their dying industry, That kind of wasteful rent seeking behavior is exactly why most people don't care if the industry dies. They brought it upon themselves by failing to innovate.

abstractwater 16y ago
They don't hate people using the RSS feed (which they sort of have to have to be on the web), but they don't want you to make money off of it.
- ugh 16y ago
  Selling feedreaders is not ok?
  - bl4k 16y ago
    not the issue. the issue is that the nytimes was included as a default feed - and is used as a showcase for the app (note that they also make use of the nytimes name, logo etc.)
- latch 16y ago
  Pulse doesn't charge you to add the NYTimes RSS feed to their application any more than the iphone itself charges you to do it.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- gokhan 16y ago
  If I'm Opera, for example, selling browser software to people for browsing / reading nytimes.com, am I allowed or not?
  - azim 16y ago
    I think if you were so inclined, you could probably consider Internet Explorer the same. It's only made available to Microsoft's own Windows customers.
mechanical_fish 16y ago
It's not that they are not trying to innovate. It's that they are trying to navigate a rapidly changing environment in a big battleship that is slowly sinking. The hell of being the NYT is that you're too big to pivot all the time, so you need to pick a plan and stick with it. And if, ten years from now, it turns out you picked the wrong plan, you will feel awful because you lost the New York Times, for gods sake, when all you had to do was follow the soon-to-be-obvious-in-hindsight Plan X. What is happening here seems clear: the Times is freaking out about iOS apps. Apple has cleverly offered the dead-trees publishers something that looks like the model they know, where they control the experience and the design and, not incidentally, the ad placement. And now the Times gets confused. Do they buy Apple's offer? The way the music publishers did? If they do, will their glass look half-empty in five years, or half-full? Or should they continue the earlier plan and try to compete on the open web where the mass of people are? And can either of these models support anything that resembles the existing staff and properties of the Times?
- iamdave 16y ago
  You bring up a good paradigm, here and it's one that distresses me when looking at the big picture of what's happening with Apple and the consumption junction society we're in now. Apple wants (probably not consciously, or at least overtly) to be the de facto hub for content distribution, and their hardware wants to be the de facto hub for content consumption. Not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with this (though some of us would like other options), but it's the way Apple is doing this that causes contention among the ranks. Even though I do not own one (I did spend about 30 minutes at Best Buy reading the NY Times Editor's Choice App), it feels very much like Apple is renting an experience to users, instead of selling one. A casualty of the digital age perhaps? Is the idea of owning content a dead one? A question for another time.
  - protomyth 16y ago
    I think Netflix is doing more to prove people are ok with renting rather than owning. Apple is still more own than rent with iTunes and the App Store. Heck, 37signals and their contemporaries proved a lot of people are ok renting apps.
danh 16y ago
I get the feeling that they are trying to adapt, desperately even, but they still keep hoping that the internet will someday just go away.
NathanKP 16y ago
Newspapers have been around for hundreds of years, news readers and the internet for decades. I almost feel sorry for the newspaper industry who had a working model for so many hundreds of years, and now have to keep up with innovation while keeping up with world events at the same time. Of course failing to innovate is their own fault. They would have been better to hire smart web engineers and planners from the start. Now they are playing catch up game while other people make money off of content that costs them money to produce.
Dirt_McGirt 16y ago
Their blog feeds certainly are. I have to scrape the pages to get a decent Krugman feed.

by tjmaxal 16y ago

abstractwater 16y ago

They don't hate people using the RSS feed (which they sort of have to have to be on the web), but they don't want you to make money off of it.

ugh 16y ago
Selling feedreaders is not ok?
- bl4k 16y ago
  not the issue. the issue is that the nytimes was included as a default feed - and is used as a showcase for the app (note that they also make use of the nytimes name, logo etc.)
latch 16y ago
Pulse doesn't charge you to add the NYTimes RSS feed to their application any more than the iphone itself charges you to do it.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
gokhan 16y ago
If I'm Opera, for example, selling browser software to people for browsing / reading nytimes.com, am I allowed or not?
- azim 16y ago
  I think if you were so inclined, you could probably consider Internet Explorer the same. It's only made available to Microsoft's own Windows customers.

mechanical_fish 16y ago

It's not that they are not trying to innovate. It's that they are trying to navigate a rapidly changing environment in a big battleship that is slowly sinking. The hell of being the NYT is that you're too big to pivot all the time, so you need to pick a plan and stick with it. And if, ten years from now, it turns out you picked the wrong plan, you will feel awful because you lost the New York Times, for gods sake, when all you had to do was follow the soon-to-be-obvious-in-hindsight Plan X. What is happening here seems clear: the Times is freaking out about iOS apps. Apple has cleverly offered the dead-trees publishers something that looks like the model they know, where they control the experience and the design and, not incidentally, the ad placement. And now the Times gets confused. Do they buy Apple's offer? The way the music publishers did? If they do, will their glass look half-empty in five years, or half-full? Or should they continue the earlier plan and try to compete on the open web where the mass of people are? And can either of these models support anything that resembles the existing staff and properties of the Times?

iamdave 16y ago
You bring up a good paradigm, here and it's one that distresses me when looking at the big picture of what's happening with Apple and the consumption junction society we're in now. Apple wants (probably not consciously, or at least overtly) to be the de facto hub for content distribution, and their hardware wants to be the de facto hub for content consumption. Not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with this (though some of us would like other options), but it's the way Apple is doing this that causes contention among the ranks. Even though I do not own one (I did spend about 30 minutes at Best Buy reading the NY Times Editor's Choice App), it feels very much like Apple is renting an experience to users, instead of selling one. A casualty of the digital age perhaps? Is the idea of owning content a dead one? A question for another time.
- protomyth 16y ago
  I think Netflix is doing more to prove people are ok with renting rather than owning. Apple is still more own than rent with iTunes and the App Store. Heck, 37signals and their contemporaries proved a lot of people are ok renting apps.

danh 16y ago

I get the feeling that they are trying to adapt, desperately even, but they still keep hoping that the internet will someday just go away.

NathanKP 16y ago

Newspapers have been around for hundreds of years, news readers and the internet for decades. I almost feel sorry for the newspaper industry who had a working model for so many hundreds of years, and now have to keep up with innovation while keeping up with world events at the same time. Of course failing to innovate is their own fault. They would have been better to hire smart web engineers and planners from the start. Now they are playing catch up game while other people make money off of content that costs them money to produce.

Dirt_McGirt 16y ago

Their blog feeds certainly are. I have to scrape the pages to get a decent Krugman feed.