Sunday, March 21, 2010

Want To Check The Quotation Of The Day? As Of Now, It's For Print Readers Only. NYT Quietly Pulls It Offline. (UPDATE: We Were Wrong!)

UPDATE: A couple of our alert readers have emailed us with directions to the Quotation of the Day on the NYT website.

It's in the "Today's Paper" section, of course. Why didn't we think of that? Maybe it's because we (and, we suppose, the two readers who wrote to us this week about it) don't read the "Today's Paper" section of the website. No need to, when you subscribe to the print edition of the NYT.

This doesn't quite answer the question raised by our readers, which was why the NYT stopped archiving the Quotation of the Day in its index as of last Sunday. But that's a minor matter. We were wrong.

Maybe this isn't the best time for us to ask whatever happened to the Saturday News Quiz.

OUR ORIGINAL POST, SO EVERYONE CAN SEE HOW WRONG WE WERE: What happened to the Quotation of the Day, that daily box on the contents page that culls the pithiest comment from the newspaper?

Oddly, the NYT appears to have pulled the popular print-edition feature from its website.

Don't worry. If you want to know today's Quotation of the Day, we'll tell you -- we just ran out and dropped five bucks for the paper. It's from Rachael Donadio's story from Rome about Pope Benedict XVI's apologetic letter to the Irish, released by the Vatican yesterday:

"It is understandable that you find it hard to forgive or be reconciled with the Church. In her name, I openly express the shame and remorse that we all feel."
POPE BENEDICT XVI,
in a letter that apologized to
people abused by clergy mem-
bers in Ireland but did not call
for disciplinary action. [6]

Although frankly, we might have gone with this one from the interview with John Cusack in the Arts & Leisure section:

"I remember very clearly being at the 1985 Super Bowl half-time show, on mushrooms."

Whatever the choice, it's been a daily part of the NYT contents page since at least 1962, which is the first year we could find it in the index.

Until March 14, 2010, that is.

That's the date the NYT stopped running the Quotation of the Day anywhere we can find on the website. And we've looked hard.

Based on our search of the NYT online index, the NYT had posted the Quotation of the Day every single day, consecutively, beginning in 1973 -- until last week.

Now, we have to admit that we've never searched for -- or noticed --- the Quotation of the Day on the website. So it's altogether possible the QOTD used to have its own button somewhere, even though we don't remember one. And wouldn't we have noticed?

Anyway, until last Sunday, the Quotation of the Day could at least be found through a NYT index search, and also through its own "Times Topics" page. But as of Monday, it was gone.

We rooted around the website for a while, looking for some explanation and/or history, and finally landed on the first Quotation of the Day we could find, from almost 48 years ago:

"I enjoyed it. I don't dance myself so I don't understand these things too well."
Premier Khrushchev at a Benny Goodman concert in Moscow.
May 31, 1962

Good start!

It doesn't make sense to remove the reliably entertaining Quotation of the Day from the website, just as the NYT prepares to put its content behind some sort of paywall.

In fact, we'd put it front-and-center on the home page -- or at least give it a button -- so that NYT readers can reach it online. It's a durable part of the paper's unique identity, and it needs to be preserved online and in its archives.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nytpicker laments that Quotation of the Day is now "only" in the print edition? Talk about surrendering to the Online Rules culture.

Anonymous said...

It's included with the "Today's Headlines" daily email.

You can see it here:

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/todaysheadlines/

Now what, nytpicker?

Anonymous said...

"Whatever the choice, it's been a daily part of the NYT contents page since at least 1962, which is the first year we could find it in the index.

Until March 14, 2010, that is.

That's the date the NYT stopped running the Quotation of the Day anywhere we can find on the website."

Huh? What happened continuously from 1962 through March 14? Not the Quotation of the Day appearing in the paper, since that is apparently continuing. Not the Quotation of the Day appearing on the web site, since... well, you know.

This one seems like kind of a dud.

Anonymous said...

The sweet words of the Holy See are a most sobering wake-up call, and may be found right here:

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/todayspaper/index.html

It is understandable that they are so difficult for you to reach, and it is best it be so, lest they be wasted on souls unready to receive the implied shift in paradigm.

Anonymous said...

Morons