Annoyed by money-grabbing Old Media

I spent the weekend in Sarajevo. My laptop stayed at home and there's no 3G network over there, hence the silence on TheGutenbergEffect. Strolling down Maršala Tita, one of the main shopping streets, I saw a sign saying 'Journalism Development Group' with 'New York University' written in their purple underneath.

It's no secret I love New York so that's what grabbed my attention. But then I remembered back in the early nineties I read an article in The Times that openned my eyes to how wonderful writing could be. Why it was this article I don't know, why was it not Shakespeare or Keats or Pepys? It just wasn't. It was Bernard Levin and an article titled: Satan laughs at Yugoslavia.

I have the cutting buried somewhere so on arriving home I went to dig it out. Then I paused and thought in this day and age it's more appropriate to google it. Nothing. To be fair I'd forgotten it was Levin who wrote it. I knew it was The Times and I knew the headline. So I searched thier online archive. Success. But success at a price, an unexpectedly, annoyingly, inexplicably high price.

Ten quid for access to ten archived articles! Maybe that's not a lot but in Bosnia ten quid bought a nice dinner for my wife and I. I wasn't about to spend that on access to one article I want, one I know is hiding somewhere in our attic. So for now I'll revisit the articl in my memory, until I find the time to mount a physical search.

As for The Times and their unexceptably awkward archive system. Perhaps it's time to write a letter to the editor!