How many consecutive quarters of declining readership and revenues will it take before NY Times investors recognize that they are just not out of step with the nation, but with the NY metroplitan region as well. It would be sad to lose a newspaper like the NY Times, but they would only have themselves to blame.

New York Times imposes selective censorship on readers

According to an AP story picked up by the Wall Street Journal today, The New York Times has blocked access to a news story to all British visitors to its Web site. The story, which talks about a recent airline terror plot in England, apparently runs afoul of a UK law that "prohibits publication of prejudicial information about the defendants prior to trial."

Once information is posted on the Internet it can't effectively be blocked. The Times Web site is also not physically located in Britain, which means it is not technically under the jurisdiction of UK laws. In addition, that same information is already available from other Web sites and has also been published in Britain's Daily Mail. But these facts seem to have escaped the Times editors, who appear anxious to play ball and perform selective censorship of UK readers after being served notice by British government authorities.

It's also interesting to note how the Times repurposed existing techonology as a mechanism for selectively repressing the news in response to government pressure. The Times already uses "geotargeting" technology to place adds on a Web page based on the requesting user's location. It does so by checking the requester's IP address and the location of the ISP that issued it. This is the first time that the Times has used that technology to selectively block access to news content to a geographic subset of its readers, according to the story. So it sets a rather dismal new predecent for selective censorship. I think it also reflects poorly on the editorial judgement of the The Times.

For more, see the WSJ story, New York Times Blocks Web Story (requires WSJ subscription).