Thanks to Userland for the blog-friendly links.

Dave Winer, long-time purveyor of Scripting News, and founder of Userland, has somehow persuaded the NY Times to allow bloggers to create special links to articles, links that continue to work even after they've entered the pay archives.

There's a special page that you can go to at the Times to create these links, which is here. And you don't even have to use a Userland blogging product, such as Radio Userland or Manila to take advantage of it. At least not yet. That's great.

I disagree with a lot of what Dave says. But I have to give credit where credit is due. This is a very nice and useful thing he, along with the Times themselves, have done which really helps blogging. He must have done some serious talking. I wonder if he's paying for this. There must have been some tit-for-tat involved. Or maybe the Times just sees the benefit in having people link to their articles. After all, you do have to go to their site to see them, which can only help them.

I still prefer linking to the Guardian and the Scotsman though, than the NY Times, since they don't hide their articles behind a money wall. They seem to be doing rather well without having to resort to this, which makes me wonder why the NY Times can't also afford to do so.

I'm also curious. Do many people really spend the money to purchase older articles? I never have, both because, quite frankly, I don't think the quality of their reporting justifies it, and because I think they're still way too expensive. Maybe if they made it less than a dollar, and made it easy to pay small amounts, but so far they haven't.

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