Feeling Jealous

There are various interesting tidbits in Gabriel Sherman's article on Bill Kristol's appointment as a New York Times columnist, but as a professional the most interesting part is the revelation that Kristol "was paid roughly five dollars a word" for his Time column. I think that's about three bajillion times more than I've ever gotten.

You also need to wonder about the economics of it. You're thinking of paying Kristol about $4,000 per column to be a columnist. How much revenue is Kristol really supposed to bring in relative to the best neoconnish writer you could have snagged for $2k per column? My sense is that we pundits are actually pretty interchangeable. What's the marginal value of Kristol over Max Boot? If Tom Friedman and Sebastian Mallaby switched newspapers, would the Times' circulation really drop?

Comments

I've vowed to never purchase the New York Times as long as William Kristol is on their payroll.

Posted by Anthony Reiner | January 24, 2008 4:33 PM

Who purchases the New York Times?

Posted by NHCt | January 24, 2008 4:41 PM

If the Times is willing to pay $5/word for the wisdom of William Kristol, imagine what they would pay for a sample of his stool? And how could they tell the difference?

Posted by calipygian | January 24, 2008 4:42 PM

WRT your first point, words are cheaper when you buy in bulk, and I think you post more to your blog than anyone else I read. Let's face it, you have more updates than most group blogs I read! (Not that I'm complaining; more material the better, especially since you keep up the quality).

Your second point is overlooking something very, very important. Though Kristol may not have anything to say that is any more insightful or extraordinary than at least two dozen other prominent neocons, he has successfully established himself as a brand. Kristol certainly isn't a household name, but I bet there are 20 times more people who recognize his than recognize Max Boot.

It's not about the message, it's the messenger.

Posted by afferent input | January 24, 2008 4:43 PM

Bill Kristol is NEVER right about anything. I don'tunderstand why the folks at the NYT (or anywhere else for that matter) want to give him a platform.

But i guess everyone has an intrinsic right to be wrong and look foolish because of it.

Posted by freaktown | January 24, 2008 4:44 PM

Do you think he got $500 for the William Henley poem he transcribed a couple days ago?

Posted by J-Ron | January 24, 2008 4:50 PM

My sense is that we pundits are actually pretty interchangeable.

You won't be saying that once your rates reach $4k/column.

Posted by jeet | January 24, 2008 4:51 PM

Yeah but Matt, your paper employs that douchebag extraordinaire Jeffrey Goldberg, the guy who listens to some drunk-assed kurdish terrorists and uses that to redraw the map of the middle east. His map has absolutely no basis in reality, and none of the new countries he names have ever existed independently, yet he makes it sound like all of the middle east is like iraq, i.e. a region where different minorities are trying to kill each other off. There could be nothing further from the truth, as anyone who has ever stepped foot in the mideast knows. Jeff only wants to provide cover for ethnic terrorists.

Posted by Oriental | January 24, 2008 4:54 PM

Bill Kristol is NEVER right about anything.

And this is the biggest problem-- Sulzberger and the conservative movement are sending the wrong message to our children: by empoying Kristol, conservatives are saying that knowledge and merit doesn't matter. We can't teach our children to work hard, when they can just say, "But look at bill Kristol? He has no idea what he's talking about, and he gets great jobs!"

Conservatives, please, won't you Think Of The Children™ and condemn this troll of a man?

Posted by Tyro | January 24, 2008 4:59 PM

If Tom Friedman and Sebastian Mallaby switched newspapers, would the Times' circulation really drop?

Probably, and the Post's would increase.

Sorry Sebastian.

Posted by SoCalJustice | January 24, 2008 5:04 PM

How about the most obvious explanation? Money. NYT decides to tear down the paywall and drive revenue with advertising. How do you get more advertising money? You get more people to look at your articles. How do you do that? Hire a right-wing blowhard who'll get lefty panties in a twist at least once every other column. "OMG, Bill Kristol said something really stupid again! Read it here..." The best way to deal with it is to completely ignore him.

Posted by omellet | January 24, 2008 5:24 PM

I know that now you're doing this pointless blog nonsense (get a real job), but is it really wise for a professional opinion writer to question the validity of differentiating between professional opinion writers on a business basis? I know that you're only talking about the specifics of the large pay of media-stars, but still.

Posted by Moral Panicker | January 24, 2008 5:27 PM

There are various interesting tidbits in Gabriel Sherman's article on Bill Kristol's appointment as a New York Times columnist, but as a professional the most interesting part is the revelation that Kristol "was paid roughly five dollars a word" for his Time column.

As a professional, Matt ought to do better at avoiding misplaced modifiers.

Posted by Rob Mac | January 24, 2008 5:35 PM

If Tom Friedman and Sebastian Mallaby switched newspapers, would the Times' circulation really drop?

Likewise, if Al wrote the posts and Matthew wrote the comments, would the Atlantic's revenue drop?

Don't answer that.

Posted by Al | January 24, 2008 5:42 PM

Come on now. Kristol is way more plugged in to the Republican power structure than any of those other guys. A better propagandist too.

Posted by mq | January 24, 2008 5:56 PM

Likewise, if Al wrote the posts and Matthew wrote the comments, would the Atlantic's revenue drop?

More interestingly, would Al's revenue from this site drop?

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | January 24, 2008 6:13 PM

$5 per word? So that's what, like $1.25 per logical fallacy?

Posted by Ned Resnikoff | January 24, 2008 6:51 PM

Moneybile!

Posted by Alan in SF | January 24, 2008 6:53 PM

It would have been pretty amazing if Ross had been selected to be a NYT columnist at age 27 despite never really having a real job that didn't consist of writing opinion pieces. Looking at Obama and now Ross, apparently publishing a memoir about yourself before you turn 35 is a smart attention-getter!

Posted by nbt | January 24, 2008 7:12 PM

It is pretty bizarre to be paying him that much, regardless of his merits as a writer. The whole point of the Times Select debacle and the WSJ experience is that comment is not premium content. Especially in the age of the blogosphere, it's pretty obvious that people can get political commentary every bit as good (and in many cases much better) than newspaper columns for free. Now the old media (especially in the US) can be very pig headed, but even so I'd be amazed if they though this hire was a money spinner.

Posted by Ginger Yellow | January 24, 2008 7:19 PM

If Tom Friedman and Sebastian Mallaby switched newspapers, would the Times' circulation really drop?

Recognizing the many flaws of 51% Friedman, is this a valid comparison? Friedman's a giant tool most of the time, but he's (at least among political geeks) a household name. Mallaby? a boring, fatuous Establishmentarian, based on the few columns of his I could make my way through.

Posted by Jim | January 24, 2008 7:36 PM

I feel a variation on a lawyer joke coming on -- if Kristol, Boot, Friedman and Mallaby were set on fire in a large public auto de fe, what would you have -- a good start.

Posted by Sir Charles | January 24, 2008 8:09 PM

"I know that now you're doing this pointless blog nonsense (get a real job), but is it really wise for a professional opinion writer to question the validity of differentiating between professional opinion writers on a business basis? I know that you're only talking about the specifics of the large pay of media-stars, but still.

Posted by Moral Panicker | January 24, 2008 5:27 PM"

Well, there is the point that we actually do choose to read MY's blog, which isn't exactly "required reading" the same way Friedman was when he was still only half-retarded or will Safire was in the "he's smart, but holy shit can he lie" way. Friedman and Dowd are now parodies of themselves, all you need to know about Kristol is that he was Dan Quayle's brain, Roger Cohen is pretty much interchangeable with Richard Cohen, etc. Herbert can be boring, but he's saying things that need to be said. Krugman of course does a good job most of the time. However, Kristof might be the only unreplaceable columnist because 1) he's just about the only columnist in the West who speaks both Chinese and Arabic 2) he takes personal risks to sneak into places like Sudan, Zimbabwe and Iran to report on important human rights issues there and 3) the fact that he and his wife did good work during in China. Mallaby is too conservative on economics and does say stuff that is empirically wrong, but at least he understands the conservative economic theories he espouses, unlike Friedman who just cribs from CEO's in Bangalore, Bill Gates, President Brody of Johns Hopkins and Egyptian cab drivers. It is amazing though that they didn't hire someone like Drezner, Fukuyama, Reihan, Ross, etc. to fill the role of "conservative liberals like" that David Brooks has abandoned by going off the deep end.

Posted by Reality Man | January 24, 2008 8:30 PM

Do conservatives read?

Posted by Linus | January 24, 2008 9:31 PM

Kristol is on TV a lot, so that's why they hired him to write. And because he now writes for the NYT, he'll be on TV forever.

Posted by Steve Sailer | January 24, 2008 9:40 PM

By the way, according to New York Magazine in 2005, Malcolm Gladwell gets $250,000 annually for 40,000-50,000 words, or at least $5 per word, but I would guess that he more than earns his salary for the New Yorker in increased subscriptions and advertising.

In contrast, I can't imagine Bill Kristol makes any bottom line difference.

Posted by Steve Sailer | January 24, 2008 9:43 PM

Kristol doesn't make a bottom line difference in himself, no, but the NYT brand does better if they can present themselves as having star columnists. It's like A-list movies. You need to cast stars, not just the best actors you can find. The audience has expectations.

Is there any neocon with Kristol's level of visibility who would work cheaper?

Posted by AlanC9 | January 24, 2008 10:23 PM

They are paying for the name on the masthead.

People will pay a lot to book someone like me as a conference speaker, not because I have views that are spectacularly different to what they might get from other speakers but because they know that I have some credibility in my field (Internet Crime), I wrote a book and my name will help them sell tickets.

The same people will spend ten times as much for a national name like Colin Powell, even though everyone in the audience knows that he does not actually know very much about the topic.

But folk who don't have a book or a name don't get paid at all, even though they might know a great deal more about the issues than those who do.

Know your market: Kristol is not being paid by the Times because anyone thinks he is right, its because he is the personification of rabid neocon republicanism.

Posted by Phillip Hallam-Baker | January 24, 2008 10:28 PM

Kristol "was paid roughly five dollars a word" for his Time column. I think that's about three bajillion times more than I've ever gotten.

You need to write something for Playboy. My relatively unknown neighbor got $3/word from them.

Posted by Samba00 | January 24, 2008 10:38 PM

Yes, the real money is in public speaking. And to get that in big amounts, you need to be on TV. People want to be in the same room (even if it's a giant conference hall) as a TV personality.

Posted by Steve Sailer | January 24, 2008 11:02 PM

What is the probability that someone who is drawn to the paper by Kristol passes his eyeballs over the ads for Gucci, Chanel, Bergdorff Goodman, etc. starting on page A2? It is this readership segment, beneficiaries of our grotesque system of overcompensation and wealth disparity, that Sulzberger is trying to capture.

Posted by bob h | January 25, 2008 7:24 AM

This remark has an unfortunate ring of truth to it:

My sense is that we pundits are actually pretty interchangeable.

Billy you don't have to be a pundit. Don't be a fool with your life.

Posted by jcasey | January 25, 2008 7:38 AM

While their columns are probably interchangeable, the names matter a lot. I outgrew Friedman's ideas years before I stopped reading his columns, and I know lots of people who don't really agree with him on much who still read his columns and books.

Posted by aleks | January 25, 2008 8:11 AM

Hmm...they should have offered Charles Krauthammer half as much, which back of the envelope is like $200K! Didn't he just get fired by Time?

Posted by bob | January 25, 2008 3:10 PM