The heart of a leftist

[Brad De Long]

>Brad De Long wrote:
>
>>_Fortune_ came calling, offering more than three times the pay of 
>>the _NYT_ for a once-a-month column. I wanted to do both. _NYT_ 
>>said no: that _Fortune_ was a competitor of theirs. I said this was 
>>absurd, and that they had already let Virginia Postrel do both 
>>"Economic Scene" and a monthly column for _Forbes_.
>>
>>I thought the _NYT_ was bluffing. It wasn't...
>
>Hmm, interesting you should make the decision on such purely 
>economic terms. Wouldn't more people read you in the NYT, with a 
>wider demographic than Fortune too.
>
>Doug

Well, I thought they were bluffing...

Readership of the _NYT_ is a  *lot* bigger than _Fortune_. But is 
readership of page D2 on a Thursday bigger than _Fortune_? The _NYT_ 
had no information on how many people reached page D2. Moreover, 
_Fortune_ offers half again as much space (which is really important: 
800 words take me at least twice as long as 1200) and _Fortune_ 
allows me to use longer words. So it was not clear to me which way 
the "intellectual influence" game went.

But if you are saying that I may have fallen for MacNamara's fallacy, 
I don't think so, but only my psychoanalyst knows for sure...

Brad DeLong