Dear New York Times, You are a Social Network

I subscribe to your email news headlines and stories.You are free now, but I used to read you faithfully everyday as a paid subscriber. Your ads run on all the business channels imploring me to subscribe to the Weekender with fees starting at $4.75 per week. I know you are in trouble financially and are seeking loans and selling off some of your equities to create operating capital.

Seems to me there are some things about the Internet that you just don't get. You have the power to harness the allegiance, loyalty, and, yes, love of your readers but you don't. You could move to a viable income-generating news source on line but not the way you tried to do it.

As a Canadian, I read by daily email  the Globe and Mail. I have become a very loyal follower because I have a connection not only to the paper but to other readers, some followers of specific columnists. I would pay to continue to read the news in a way that allows me to be involved by voicing my  opinion, commenting and reading the opinions of others, and being in conversation with a community readers.

I would love to be able to read Paul Krugman, Thomas Friedman, and Maureen Dowd and comment on their editorials on the Times's webpage the next day after their article. But you close comments as soon as possible. Why? . I would relish having my own Times page and profile where I could bookmark articles, write my own editorials, chat with subscriber-friends, and have interest-specific ads sent to me.  I would pay for this.

A newspaper cannot be the arbitrator of thought online as it is on paper sending down the word to its minions of readers. It is a far more populist proposition that can derive greater benefits and profits by enjoining in a dialog, relationship, and interaction with its readership. The entire Internet is one big letter to the editor. Krugman and Friedman miss the mark totally with Twitter by using it just to post URL links to their articles rather than enticing greater readership loyality by engaging with some of the retweets to their tweets. By comparison, Guy Kawasaki, author and speaker, has engendered the largest following on Twitter by taking the time to reach out and connect to and talk back to those who follow him. His new book will sell well, just through his Twitter following.

It's up to you, New York Times, how to move forward into this century but you won't be able to make much progress with attitudes that engender thinking in Times Roman and acting like you are newsprint and ink. It's sans-serf in cyberspace, sans barriers, and a rethinking of the citizen as a partner in journalism not as an audience.