The internet just got better

First, Clive Davis is blogging again. Never mind the jazz, his observations on life and literature were one of the pleasures of my early reading of blogs, back in the old days when Tony Blair was still Prime Minister. Now he is back. Not only that, he is on Twitter, which only really took off after Blair stood down (it was founded in 2006).

Second, five of the Times commentators have launched a group blog outside the pay wall. This has already been gleefully hailed by those of a destructive, negative and cynical bent as a breach in the Berlin Wall of people trying to make money out of the internet, but it seems like good sense to me.

The Times continues to charge for comment articles, but Daniel Finkelstein, Hugo Rifkind, David Aaronovitch, Oliver Kamm and Philip Collins will now also post shorter comments outside the pay wall.

This seems a workable model to me: by maintaining their visibility in the blogging universe, they will draw paying customers to the subscription articles. It is a model that seems to work for magazines such as Prospect. Partly free and partly paid-for.

Anyway, as a Times subscriber, I welcome it, because those five are a loss to blogging, and you can’t do a blog behind a pay wall.

I don’t have a blog roll, but if I did I would put Davis and Times Opinion on it.

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• http://twitter.com/francessmith frances smith

  so they are feeling left out then, are they?

  it was bound to happen in the end, but they now have to be ignored until the  paywall is removed.

  you journalists have misused your power for far too long, a bit of suffering is not unreasonable.

• mightymark

  The journalists concerned are among the best in the profession who have abused any power they have the least  – if at all.

• greggf

  Tried it JR, and it’s good to see their blogs again. However postings do not seem to be allowed….?