Gonna take away their their web access, too?

via Raw Story: New York Times 'disconnects' public e-mail addresses for its columnists

Months after moving its Op-Ed columnists behind a "paywall," the New York Times will now 'disconnect' columnists' public e-mail addresses, RAW STORY has learned.

The Times has advised papers which receive their news content to remove any old e-mail addresses which they may have published alongside Op-Ed columns.

"The New York Times no longer provides public e-mail addresses for its Op-Ed columnists," a memo obtained by RAW STORY asserts. "With the advent of the paper's online program TimesSelect, subscribers are invited to contact columnists from within The Times' Web site, nytimes.com."

I'm beginnning to think that we should stop referring to the world of fishwrap journalism as "mainstream media" and start calling them "ostrich media." The WaPo old guard seem to resent their own Froomkin's web cred; the Times seems to be intent on responding to the threat bloggers pose by doing their best to pretend we don't exist.

Times Selective goes a long way toward accomplishing "speak no evil": by moving his columnists behind the wall, Pinch Sulzberger has essential purchased the electronic silence of MoDo, the Shrill One, Bob Herbert and and Frank Rich, whose work now is only rarely commented on in the blogosphere. (Bobo the Clown, being the token conservative, seems to have little difficulty scoring serious TV face time.) Now the "hear no evil" component is in place as well. Only a matter of time before Pinch and Bill Keller order them to stop looking at the Internet as well.

Yo, Pinch-- why don't you just cut to the chase , do what the LA Times did with Robert Scheer and fire their asses? It'll make your East Hampton dinners with the Queen of Iraq so much more pleasant, and maybe the Preznit will stop calling you on the carpet for your apostacy.