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The Times says it’s expanding its Opinion pages online with more contributors, content, video and discussions. Editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal’s new blog “will scan and respond to the world of opinion at The Times and elsewhere,” says a release. New Opinionator columnists include bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel, who will comment on health care policy, and author/naturalist Diane Ackerman, who will cover science and nature. More new features are described after the jump.
Press release
NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)– The New York Times is expanding its Opinion Pages online with more contributors, content, video and enhanced discussion features building upon the new Sunday Review section. The enhanced Opinion Pages will be available on all digital and mobile platforms.
To celebrate the expansion, The Times will host three Opinion Pages Live events. The first event, a political panel discussion, is taking place today at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. Additional events will be held in New York and Paris in December and January. The events will be streamed live on NYTimes.com/Opinion.
“The Opinion Pages are a cornerstone of our offerings to readers,” said Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of The New York Times and chairman of The New York Times Company. “We continue to invest in expanding content that better serves our readers, in the U.S. and around the world.”
New content and features, launching in the coming weeks, include:
* A new blog by Editorial Page Editor Andrew Rosenthal will scan and respond to the world of opinion at The Times and elsewhere.
* Border Lines, a weekly map series by Frank Jacobs that will examine the contemporary political world map through examples of quirks in national borders, which illuminate enclaves, exclaves, no-man’s-lands, undefined borders, etc.
* New Opinionator columnists, including: Ezekiel Emanuel, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, who will comment on health care policy; and Diane Ackerman, an author and naturalist, who will cover science and nature, among others.
* Frequent Op-Eds that will be exclusively available to online readers.
* Op-Docs, opinionated, short-video documentaries, with wide creative ranges, about current affairs and contemporary life from both renowned and emerging filmmakers.
* Campaign Stops, a political opinion blog that will chronicle the 2012 election cycle with regular contributions from Timothy Egan, Charles M. Blow, Ross Douthat and Thomas B. Edsall, among others.
* Additional enhancements to the Global Opinion section.
“The Times’s opinion content is among the most read and valued by our readers,” said Andrew Rosenthal, editorial page editor of The New York Times. “We are delighted to offer our readers more of the thoughtful commentary and analysis they can’t get anywhere else.”
Like the current Opinion section, the new enhanced Opinion will be included in the digital subscription plan.
As part of the expansion, The Times will unveil improved discussion features with redesigned comments later this year. The new design will make comments easier to read, and allow commenters to reply to each other and to share comments via Facebook and Twitter. The Times will also create a Trusted Commenter program, available to a select group of readers with a history of high-quality comments, whose submissions will be published on the Opinion Pages and across NYTimes.com without prior moderation. Eligible commenters will be invited to join the program and will be asked to verify their identity by connecting a Facebook profile to their NYTimes.com commenting profile.
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