NY Times Columnists Telling Readers How To Get Around The Paywall

As we learned the last time the NY Times blocked its esteemed columnists off behind a paywall, those columnists really don't like being cut out of the conversation. So it's somewhat amusing, in the wake of the new paywall announcement, that star columnist Paul Krugman is already telling readers how to get around the paywall. Since it will be free to visit stories if you come in from elsewhere, Krugman is telling people an easy way to do so:

But for those who haven't [subscribed], arriving at this blog via links won't count against your ration of free nytimes.com views. As I understand it, for example, you can come in via my automated Twitter feed; and of course clicking on links at Mark Thoma or other blogs will also work.

Of course, in thinking about this, you have to wonder if there are going to be additional unintended consequences for the Times. For example, its home page is going to lose a lot of value, because each click now has a significant "cost." However, if you were to browse another site... say, one some third party set up that linked to the Times' articles, you could click those links without that cost. Your basic economics has to say that this harms the Times' own site while opening up opportunities for third parties to collect that traffic. It would be interesting if a Nobel Prize winning economist... such as Paul Krugman... decided to make that point to the geniuses in upper management at the NY Times.
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