Hogan's Alley

Sunday, September 18, 2005

Can't Register for the NY Times "TimesSelect"

Leaving aside the wisdom, or lack thereof, displayed by the Times in segregating its opinion columnists in a kind of pay-per-view ghetto, it now turns out that present subscribers to the hard copy Times can't register for the new TimesSelect service, which is advertised to be free for such subscribers.

For the last four days I have attempted unsuccessfully to register. Each time an apparent system glitch fails to complete the process. Today a call to the 866 number frustrated subscribers are referred to confirmed that the, "system is down." I was asked to try back in a few hours and assured they were working on the problem. What happened? Did the Times use FEMA to help with their own mini-disaster recovery? Will heads roll, or will the Times show Bush-like loyalty to its computer staff?