I’ve been holding back on posting, but I’m ready now – and I won’t be pulling punches.

Blogs around the web (Wired, Gizmodo, Techdirt, TechCrunch) have reported that The New York Times pressured Apple to remove the most popular RSS reader from the App Store because the reader was making “commercial use” of the NYT RSS feeds. It is an interesting story and still developing as the app had been pulled earlier today and is now back up. Read the other accounts above for more information on the story.

But for me this is just another move in the wrong direction for the New York Times. Under the leadership of Vivian Schiller the Times set a benchmark for how a newspaper should adapt to digital media. It undertook local blogging initiatives, refined a beautiful site design and removed pay walls. The Times was experimental with graphics and use of data to tell stories. They were the benchmark.

Now that Schiller is with NPR it seems that conservatives within the organization have been taking reactionary steps to undo many initiatives. The idea of a paywall is back and being built right now. And fences around content apparently now extend to public RSS feeds. At this point why not just shut those down? I use google reader for my feeds and it is most certainly commercial. Then I reference all the knowledge I get from the feeds to do my job every day and make money, another commercial use. Heck I use a laptop I bought from Apple and a browser that makes money for Google – both commercial. But besides the bizarre attempt to fence in content, the magic just seems to have dissipated. It feels like The New York Times has packed up its toys and is leaving the playground.

My friend thought it was like the last season of Lost. Jacob was the cork who kept an evil spirit from spilling out into the world. It feels like Vivian Schiller was a cork that kept all the stupid ideas rumbling around in executives’ heads from spilling out into the world. She is gone now and dumb ideas are flowing out. Sad.