The NYT's registration system and expiring pages have doomed them to google-obscurity. Wired News argues that they've gone from being the paper of record to a Web-era irrelevancy, and all to protect a Lexis-Nexis agreement and to bring in two to three percent of the digital division's profits.
But recently, when I googled the terms "Iraq torture prison Abu Ghraib" — certainly one of the most intensively covered news stories of the year — the first New York Times article was the 295th search result, trailing the New Yorker, Guardian, ABC and CBS News, New York Post, MSNBC, Slate, CNN, Sydney Morning Herald, Denver Post, USA Today, Bill O'Reilly on FoxNews and a host of others news sites.
