Stuart Robinson’s Weblog

in Manhattan, a group of slightly older editors cleaned out their desks in a more conventional fashion at the offices of The New York Times Company. Most of them walked around in a state of shock: The Times’ board of directors had just voted to shut down the newspaper’s foundering Web division, after a loss of $30 million in less than a year

I guess that helps to explain the pay-wall madness to follow.

“We learned a thing or two,” said Time Warner Chairman Gerald Levin, only half-jokingly, at a recent raucous shareholder meeting. “Gangsta rap-yes. World Wide Web-no.”

That really doesn’t help explain the AOL-TW madness to follow.

The year? 1996