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Those of us privileged enough to be members of Times Select can now read The Opinionator, the NYT's latest foray into the world of blogging. It looks and feels a bit more like a blog than previous experiments like Pogue's Posts and The Carpetbagger. But unlike them, it's behind the Times Select firewall, which means it's paid for by subscriptions rather than by advertising.
Except... The Opinionator comes with both an RSS feed and an Atom feed, but both of them are truncated to the point of uselessness. Normally, the reason for this is that the blogger wants to force the reader to click through to the website and read the ads on it. But there aren't any ads on The Opinionator. So why on earth are they truncating the feed? Oh, I know – it's because they don't want to password-protect the RSS feed, and they're worried that otherwise non-Times Select subscribers would be able to read the content. Quel horreur!
Well, that is the point of paid content isn't it?
Why don't you use your powers for good and ask Terry Teachout, Jeff Jarvis (though I haven't checked in a while), or the MediaBistro empire to have full feeds? Doesn't Gawker Media even truncate some feeds (and if not, the did until very recently)?
Posted by: 99 on January 25, 2006 02:58 AMThat would make sense, if the NYT was putting the RSS feed out there for those of us with RSS readers who are too cheap to sign up. But I can't find it anywhere...
Which is typical for the NYT- I've signed up for the Pogue RSS feed, but never read it, because when I click through, I can't navigate from that site to the Pogue's Posts front page. It's really frustrating.
Posted by: mike on January 25, 2006 02:59 AMQuel horreur!
Shouldn't that be "Quelle horreur!"? I may have only taken one semester of Frog talk, and I may have gotten a 'D', but even I know that if we start butchering their jibber-jabber excuse for a language they might start showing up here in numbers. And nobody wants that.
Posted by: Sterling on January 25, 2006 07:01 AMJarvis has full feeds. The ArtsJournal and MediaBistro empires, like the NYT empire, do not. The Gawker empire, on the other hand, does have full feeds, as does HuffPost. Slate doesn't. Not having a full feed is inexcusable these days, but it seems that virtually everybody without one works for some kind of corporation which ultimately calls the shots. Except Matthew Rose. Why his blog doesn't have full feeds I have no idea.
Posted by: Felix on January 25, 2006 08:26 AMAnswer: Because I have no idea how to make them work and am not sure I really care. Les jeux sont fait, rien ne va plus.
Posted by: Matthew on January 25, 2006 05:27 PMOh, and don't forget those anti-corporatist pro-marriage folks over at Stay Free.
I've haven't done a clean install of MT in a long time, but it used to default to truncated feeds. I suspect TypePad does. So there are probably more than a few still floating around out there.
Posted by: 99 on January 25, 2006 05:45 PMThe exception that proves the rule: Andrew Sullivan. When he moved to Time, suddenly a full feed appeared for the first time. Good for them!
Posted by: Felix on February 7, 2006 02:57 AM