As you know if you received an e-mail from its publisher, or if you read nyceve's plaintive lamentation yesterday of trying to deal with NYT customer service of the phone, the New York Times is going "pay to read" next Monday. If you don't subscribe in one or another way, you can "window shop" the front page of the paper and of the various sections, but if you want to peek inside more than 20 times in a calendar month, you gotta pay. ("Pinch" Sulzberger's e-mail is reproduced at the bottom of this diary for those who want details.)
There is an exception. From the e-mail:
Readers who come to Times articles through links from search, blogs and social media like Facebook and Twitter will be able to read those articles, even if they have reached their monthly reading limit.
Well, OK, then! They know that this policy may not work, so they've built in an escape hatch. They wouldn't build it if they didn't want people to use it. So: let's use it.
This diary introduces the New York Times Link Club. (It will also be abbreviated "NY Times Link Club" and the official name in your group list will be "NYT Link Club.") The basic idea is this:
Every day, starting tomorrow at 12:01 a.m. Eastern Time , this group will publish an almost-empty shell diary. Group editors will then fill it up with links to everything we think is interesting to read in the new day's New York Times.
People who follow the group can read the NYT's stories from here for free. If there's a story you want to read, put in a request and someone will post a link. If we need to go there to get the link, well, 20 articles per month times thousands of active Kosters should take care even of the peak election season.
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