[evgen]

It could be that the business model is less suited to correspondents who have their own brand. Bringing the this particular blog into the NYT fold probably helped both a little but I am betting that the ongoing costs to the Freakonomics brand were getting to be a bit much (e.g. myself and probably thousands of others who dropped the freakonomics blog when the stopped providing full RSS feeds.)

[oiuhjyftgrdgh]

Just like syndicated cartoonists - it is interesting though that a major print newspaper isn't as good as a blog once you have your own book out.