The Old Republic

Technologically, that is. Last night I sat down to check out the just-published New Republic. After reading Michael Crowley’s characteristically insightful piece on Wisconsin Sen. Russell Feingold, I tried to open Jeffrey Rosen’s essay on Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito.

Unlike Crowley’s article, Rosen’s was restricted to subscribers only — and I got a message saying that my print subscription had expired. No problem, or so I thought. I’d already decided that when my print subscription ran out, I would switch to the digital-only edition. (After all, if I had to wait for my mail carrier, Friday night would have turned into next Tuesday or Wednesday.)

But — incredibly — there was no provision to switch from print to digital online. When I tried to access a subscriber-only feature, I got a message that said:

Your subscription to The New Republic has expired…. If you feel this is inaccurate, or would like to switch to TNR Digital, please contact us at tnrdigital@tnr.com.

Unwilling to take “later” for an answer, I tried signing up for a digital subscription anyway. Naturally I got a message saying that my user name and password were already taken (by me, of course).

So, finally, I did as I was told and sent an e-mail to tnrdigital@tnr.com explaining what had happened and asking to switch my expired print subscription to online-only — something that should cut my renewal fee of about $70 to just $30. And now I have to wait for someone to read my e-mail, and to hope that he or she understands what I’m trying to do. This is 2005?

By the way, I’m not sure how he did it, but Andrew Sullivan found a free link to Rosen’s article. So there.