Talk is (no longer) cheap:

I confess to having become dependent on my morning headlines email from the New York Times, sticking with it even through such annoying foolery as audio ads that play as soon as an article loads. The ad for the movie ABBA roaring out the dismal bubblegum tune "Dancing Queen" still makes me shiver to contemplate. Now the Times wants cash American, in the form of a subscription to TimeSelect, in order to read--not the news, not the editorials--but the top Op Ed pieces.

In a workshop given by Truthout pundit Williams Rivers Pitt that I attended this past weekend, he said that overnight, the once-influential Times Op Ed columnists David Brooks and Tom Freidman have vanished from the forums of the blogosphere. Where once a search would find thousands of references to their most recent articles, now only a handful can be found, unless it is to make furious comment on the pay-to-read firewall.

So isn't it nice to announce four new forever-free news emails from NCPR, and a new Book by Email serial, also free. And I give my solemn word--I will never subject our gentle readers to any version of "Dancing Queen." I leave that to Radio Bob, for moments when he wants to tweak the station manager.