No moment is ever a good moment to write. Unless you happen to have some means of record the moment you fall under a spell of inspiration. But I digress.

Does "gonzo blogging" exist? Well, it seems it does. In fact, it seems all personal weblogs are gonzo, at least if we take the definition given by Andrew Arnold: "...Gonzo in the Hunter S Thompson sense is reclaiming the right to expression as much as the railing against opression." Take that, Raging Cow!

Well, my train of thought has just derailed. (Not that it advanced on firm tracks, mind you.) I've just found out the NY Times has built stronger walls around their treasured backlog of news. That link for "Raging Cow" above? I expected it to take you to a March 27 article about the webloggers who agreed to pitch the soft drink to their readers, but now it sends you to a "Buy this article!" page.

OK, so I've known for a long, long time that the Times considers selling their old articles one of their revenue sources. Check this note on their search page:

Note: Articles from the last 7 days are free, as are all reviews back to 1996.
Articles in the Premium Archive ($) may be purchased for as little as $1.05. Learn more.

Still, there was a way to work around those 7 days: if you knew the URL to an old article, you could just jump right into it, no need to pay "as little as $1.05." They must have gotten wise to that trick.

And it's not only the Times. The New Republic also launched their "Digital" thingamabob earlier this year, which allows suscribers to read the complete contents of the magazine on-line. Alas, part of the deal was also blocking access to the older content. Argh!

I don't know why I'm railing so badly at this. I'm a Salon Premium suscriber, after all. I understand the need to pay for access in the current economy. Still, Salon didn't build a wall around their older content, so...

Pfft! Just another ranter "railing against opression" in the larger rantsphere.