Stars n Moons 9/19/07

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

By PJH Staff

Times Select ending pay service
Though this would be better suited for “Media Watch” scrutiny, the cancellation this week of the two-year old Times Select paid service will instead be relegated to “Star and Moon” fodder (the two features alternate weekly, in case you didn’t notice).

At midnight EST this morning, the New York Times ended the paid services, for which viewers had to pay a monthly or yearly rate to read selected columnists and editorials.
But the truth is that not only do many conservatives take issue with the NYT, so does much of the younger, hipper, and often liberal blogosphere (which I do not represent, but am reporting on).

While a political distaste for the outlet is one thing, what new media has against the NYTimes is that the staunch, uber-hubristic paper has done what it could to discredit from its lofty perch the transformation of the way information and news is shared.
For the last few years, the paper has taken a hit in circulation and was slow to embrace the “electronic revolution,” though web tabs over the last few months report the online edition received more hits than any other single news site. 

A NYT executive said in an article the company did not anticipate the amount of traffic redirected to its site via search engines like Google.  There is speculation, however, low subscribership to Times Select weighed in more than the allure of ad sales for a highly trafficked site.

That the musings of NYT sports columnist Selena Roberts will now be available for free is not much to get excited about.

What is exciting is that, whether or not the NYT learns to survive in the new era, the times, are a-changin’.
— Ben Cannon

10 years of Cloudveil
A big, shiny, embroidered star for Brian Cousins and Stephen Sullivan, founders of Cloudveil, who celebrate history of their Jackson-based business in a classy little black book just released called “A Brand Story: Cloudveil Mountain Works, 1997-2007.”
The book is half-story, half-scrapbook, with everything from a photo of “Sulli’s last paycheck before starting Cloudveil ($2.00)” to inserts of 1997 “3mm cordage for zipper pulls.”

The 62-page volume must have been fun to make. I’m jealous of the amount of introspection and “we did it”-ness that must have come from this project. I can imagine the contributors raiding their storage spaces and tearing through old notebooks to find the artifacts memorialized in the pages, or sitting up in the middle of the night going, “The receipt! I think I know where the first receipt is!”

Why did they start Cloudveil? Why didn’t it fail? Where did the money come from? It’s all in here – the ethos, the stories, the designs and a decade of catalog covers. Cheers to this little book, and cheers to taking the time to reflect and acknowledge 10 years in the valley.
— Grace Hammond
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Stars n Moons 9/19/07 | Planet JH News Article: Stars & Moons

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