I recently wrote that I thought Paul Krugman wrote slightly too many blog posts, and that too many spent time commenting on them, and commenting on others’ comments and so on and on—a “Krugman multiplier“. Now an explanation for Krugman’s exceptional blog productivity is beginning to offer itself.
The New York Times, who hosts Krugman’s blog, have introduced a counter on their web edition such that you can only read ten articles per month. So, only ten Paul Krugman blog posts per month if that’s your only reason for visiting NYT. A rough guesstimate tells me that this amounts to around only ten to twenty percent of his output. The problem with this, of course, is that you then has to be careful when picking a post to read (if you don’t feel that you want to pay for potential scientific commentary). With Krugman’s indisputable talent for picking inviting titles, this is a daunting task. I just spent one of my ten shots at the post “Eurodämmerung“, which is mainly a link to a YouTube video of the final of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung. Great music, but a little disappointing.
And, of course, I had to see what “Raygunomics” was. As you can see from the screen shot, this will be the last I can get from Krugman this month. As you can also see, it was indeed really funny, and well worth the click:
Copyright: New York Times, 2012. All rights reserved.
Good luck to the New York Times with this new pricing initiative. I will consider the offer, but maybe I will be able to free-ride on the Krugman multiplier, and get his more substantive posts elsewhere?
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