Jamie writes about strange way in which The Times not just disappeared behind a paywall, but from public consciousness:
But back in the pre-internet days I was certainly aware of the Times as an institution. I had the sense that it would always be there and that it fulfilled a need of some sort. It had an ambient presence, and quite a large one, extending far outside its actual readership.
And now, nothing. Nothing at all. It’s not just a case of not missing it but of forgetting that it was ever there, which is quite odd when you think of the wider social role and meaning it used to have in British life: from Voice of the Establishment to Hermit Kingdom. Or perhaps it’s a consequence of the whole debate about the paywall. If you’re constantly reminded that something is no longer there, then you’re forced to conclude how little it matters. I suppose that’s what happens to hollow institutions when they stop constantly reminding people that they are institutions. I wonder what would happen if you put the Royals behind a paywall.
I’m not sure it’s the dpaywall itself that’s to blame for this. The Times has never had the place in the internet’s public consciousness that a rival paper like The Guardian had. In my own experience, few bloggers actually linked to Times stories and when they did, nine out of ten times the links just disappeared ins blauen hinein anyway. Their competitors like the Indy, Daily Mail and Guardian/Observer were much quicker and smarter in exploiting online attention and controversy, aiming beyond their traditional readers at the casual browser, including large foreign audiences.
The Times has always been something of a prestige object for Murdock, not necessarily needing to make a profit as long as it got the ears of the Westminister elites. Even today that audience is notoriously webshy and technophobe so it maybe that this online disappearance of the newspaper is of less importance than that people like us, for whom nothing exists if not reachable online would assume. That we don’t notice Times generated buzz doesn’t matter, as long as the politicians and Westminister orientated media still do…