Author Archives: Timothy B Lee

In my last post I promised to consider how online news organizations can produce expensive content like reporting from Iraq. Sites wanting to produce high-quality, expensive content face a chicken-and-egg problem. If you have a large audience, you can spread … Continue reading →

Judging from the comments on my two posts last week on reporting and paywalls, I didn’t do a good job of making my case. I think that’s partly because this is an argument about culture as much as economics. Traditional … Continue reading →

Reihan Salam was kind enough to link to Monday’s post comparing the New York Times to Pro Publica, which led Matthew Vadum of the Capital Research Center to lambast him for promoting what Vadum considers an “awful leftist media outlet.” … Continue reading →

As a counterpoint to the arguments I made yesterday, Reihan Salam points me to this article about MetroPCS, which is on deck to be the new #4 wireless carrier: MetroPCS targets big city markets and keeps their prices low by … Continue reading →

AT&T, the second-largest mobile phone company, recently announced that it intends to purchase T-Mobile, the number four wireless firm. Jerry Brito has a typically insightful post in which he argues that this merger is all about spectrum scarcity: If a … Continue reading →

Last week I got in a bit of an argument with Adam Thierer, Randy Picker, and others about the New York Times paywall. I think a paywall is a bad business strategy, but my opposition to paywalls is mostly a … Continue reading →

The New York Times‘s says they’re going to take another stab at erecting a paywall, just four years after they abandoned their previous effort. On Friday, I got into a debate with Dan Rothschild about it. Dan wrote that “if … Continue reading →

Matt Yglesias points to this fascinating paper about the influence of intellectuals on political coalitions: Following Converse’s advice that ideology is the product of a “creative synthesis,” conducted by a narrow group of intellectuals, this paper reports on attempts to … Continue reading →

A quick personal note: unlike the past couple of summers, when I did software engineering work, this summer I’m hoping to spend my time writing about public policy. I’ve gotten a couple of good offers, but I’m hoping this blog … Continue reading →

A few days ago I happened to stop by the local supermarket during the post-work rush. When I was ready to check out all the regular lanes had long lines. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t mind waiting a few minutes, but on … Continue reading →