The NYTimes Co. is laying off 500 more workers.

These will affect both the Boston Globe and the Times itself. Kind of ironic after denouncing Bush for suspending the Davis-Bacon Act. If the Times didn't have to pay union wages in its printing plants, how many jobs could it have saved.

Is asking people to pay to read Krugman, Dowd, et al. online the answer? No, but it might at least cut down on the amount of blogranting about their latest outrages. That has to count as a public service. Or maybe not. It'll be interesting to know how much they make on that deal. I quit doing the Times crosswords when they started charging for them and then raised the rates, and those crosswords are more addictive than Krugman or Dowd. David Brooks is a good writer and generally quite sensible, but he's a Milquetoast compared to the others, which is probably why he got the Times gig. If he'd been as intemperate on the right as they are on the left, he'd still be writing for The Weekly Standard or, more likely, have his own radio and TV talk show like Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity.

If you're a columnist, you'd better start a blog and hope you can attract an audience.