By: Chuck Miller
What's Up in the Neighborhood

What’s Up in the Neighborhood, April 18 2020

It looks like I got away from the TU blog portal just in time.

Nearly 11 years ago, I signed on as a blogger with the Times Union’s blog portal, and stayed there for 8 1/2 years.  I left the portal in 2017, and have found more success as a solo practitioner.  Meanwhile, the blog portal has undergone radical de-evolution over the years; the blogs are now covered with pop-up ads and more cookies than in a Girl Scout’s selling quota.

Recently, the TU moved three of their staff blogs – the Capital Confidential, Steve Barnes’ Table Hopping, and whatever trifle Kristi Barlette is writing these days – behind their paywall.  So you now have to subscribe to the TU to get to read their blogs.  As current TU editor Casey Seiler said in a memo about the situation, “The reason for the shift is quite simple, and unlikely to draw much in the way of debate from the blog’s fans: This material is too good to give away for free.”

Wait, you’re telling me Kristi’s stuff is “too good to give away for free?”  That’s the first decent belly laugh I’ve had this year.

That’s right … the TU thinks this stuff is golden, it should be preserved behind a paywall.  All the other blogs, including the community ones – we don’t think it’s that golden, so we can hand it out for free.  Along with the pop-up ads and the cookies.  Pfft, and it’s not like they give two ticks and a click about them.  For example, if you try to bookmark Rob Hoffman’s “Hoffman Files” page, it only links to his stories from 2017 and earlier.

So yeah, same old Times Union, same old “we will promote our staff blogs to the world, but the community bloggers can wilt in the corner.”

Look, if you really are desperate to read the TU’s staff blogs, and you don’t want to subscribe, click on the blog post, let it say “you are not a subscriber,” then hit your <F9> key.  The page will convert into an all-text version of the same article, and you can still read it for free.

But you know what you can also read for free?  All these wonderful articles and blogs and photographic excursions by my fellow bloggers and writers and photographers.   And all these blogs remain free to read.

BLOGS FOR TASTE

BLOGS FOR TRAVEL

BLOGS FOR THE IMAGE

BLOGS FOR HISTORY

BLOGS FOR HEALTH

BLOGS FOR LIFESTYLE

BLOGS FOR EASTER

  • Fran Rossi Szpylczyn’s “There Will Be Bread” blog, “Easter dawns.“
  • The Capital District Fun blog, “Easter.“
  • Silvia Lilly’s “DelSo” blog, “Rise Up.“

BLOGS FOR THE WORD

Have a great weekend, everybody!