Those who have spent a lifetime (75 years in my case) with the New York Times, from days of smudged fingers on, are moved to realize that “All the News That’s Fit to Print” is passing another milestone.
As the Times imposes subscription fees for more-than-casual readers, it’s like the change in a long affair–with time out for 15 years of open digital co-habitation–after decades together under old rules.
In those days, it was like waking up every morning with a virtuous kept woman. We paid only pennies a day for her favors, but she held our ménage together in high style by selling a byproduct of the relationship–our attention–to advertisers, scrupulously walling off their interests from ours.
It’s astonishing to look back at how well and for how long this variation on monogamy worked–our complete faith in the integrity of a partner whose survival depended on, as Blanche Du Bois might have put it, the kindness of others.
Over that time, to borrow another theatrical metaphor, we had unwittingly “grown accustomed to her face,” and like Henry Higgins, much more emotionally involved than we realized.