New York Times Running On Fumes
alleyinsider.com
alleyinsider.com
For that matter, if they do go down, what happens to the archive? I hope that something like Wikimedia or the Internet Archive gets access to it, so all that information isn't lost forever.
The problem is likely twofold:
1) Print is expensive. 2) Internet ads don't pay like print ads used to pay.
Okay, threefold:
3) Craigslist has killed the classifieds market dead.
Newspapers around the world are suffering from these things. It's just acutely sad that the paper of record is no better off than the rest....
Speaking as someone at a newspaper, I can tell you that the NYT is better off than many of the rest.
In short, they've been making moves towards becoming an Internet company for longer than others, as evidenced by their 100+ person development team, use of Ruby on Rails for major projects, and overall technical talent. That is a unique position among newspapers.
As it stands, pageview content ads don't generate enough revenue to run a paper using a print newspaper inspired business model.
They have experience with that via About.com. How much better could the NYT do then About?
Not saying they definitely shouldn't do it, but definitely not for the ads. If they could get archives-to-print conversion without cannibalising any other businesses that rely on owning content, maybe they could break even on lost subscriptions. Maybe not.
There is no shame admitting defeat if you're doing it wrong.
"We're in the newspaper business, and for too long people have been stuck on the second part of that word."
And a-la-carte pricing is actually bad for newspaper profits. First of all, if the customer has to look at each headline and think, "do I want to spend another penny for this story?", the customer is likely to pay less. Second, aggregation lets the newspaper profit from people who value different articles at different rates, as Clay Shirky explains (http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2000/12/19/micropayments.ht...):
"Imagine a newspaper sold in three separate sections - news, business, and sports. Now imagine that Curly would pay a nickel to get the news section, a dime for business, and a dime for sports; Moe would pay a dime each for news and business but only a nickel for sports; and Larry would pay a dime, a nickel, and a dime. If the newspaper charges a nickel a section, each man will buy all three sections, for 15 cents. If it prices each section at a dime, each man will opt out of one section, paying a total of 20 cents. If the newspaper aggregates all three sections together, however, Curly, Moe and Larry will all agree to pay 25 cents for the whole, even though they value the parts differently."
iTunes makes money by unpackaging songs and selling alcarte why not news?
The POD device could offer other printed materials as well and you could sell it to the news stands as a way to avoid buying a bunch of inventory that is going to go stale in 1 to 30 days anyways.
What that article is really saying is that you could charge more for a customized paper even if it had less content and people wouldn't care.
I can think of so many ways that newspapers could monetize their content online, but they really don't seem to get it. Newspapers have tons of great long tail content that can be mined and monetized. They just don't know what is possible and what can be done.
Even if it ran at a loss it still has value due to its prestige. Newscorp recently bought the WSJ for 6B when it was in a similar predicament.
http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSN23458880200810...
BTW, any idea how much?
Also, if you're in finance and you don't read the WSJ, you're not going to be able to communicate with your colleagues.
The most valuable asset that the New York Times has is its brand. Well, that and a big honking New York skyscraper.
I'm thinking along the lines of reporters who are funded for long enough to go to a foreign country, genuinely spend time understanding what's going on, and writing thoughtful, lengthy articles (that then of course get parroted all over). Is that largely the responsibility of the editorial staff at a newspaper?
I guess Google should get those people and maybe get them to throw in the logo. :)
And that's not counting ads (or printing cost) perhaps they cancel out though
How many NYT employees does it take to screw in a light bulb? About 11,615.
How exactly would firing 97% of the workforce help turn things around? Let's say you've got 350 writers and a couple great managers. Nevermind what your massive layoffs do for morale or company image. Who is going to publish what they write? Do you stay in the print business or do you take it online? Who prints it? Who is going to distribute it? Who puts it online? Who is going to do the investigation necessary to provide the writers with interesting things to write about? Who is going to market the business? How are you going to process payroll and handle day to day HR issues? Don't you also need a legal department? Afterall, you are writing stories about people and they may not always like what you write. You are going to have the occasional libel suit even if you have covered your bases. Oh, and who is going to run your email servers through which all of this will be organized?
Meet at Starbucks? Sheesh... This is the New York Times. They've been in business since 1851 and have received 98 Pulitzer Prizes. That's more than any other paper. In 1964 they took a case to the Supreme Court (Times v. Sullivan) which further established freedom of the press. In 1971 they successfully argued a Supreme Court case against the US government over a series of articles which revealed the expansion of the Vietnam War at the same time President Johnson was promising not to expand the war. There's no doubt they have some major problems, but this is a very prestigious organization you're talking about- not some crappy startup blog/amateur media outlet.
Your idea solves just about nothing and creates enormous problems. Running a newspaper, or any business for that matter, involves a lot more than you've taken into account.
Now to my point... I read up a little bit on the history of the paper. It was founded in 1907 by a woman who had been targeted by the owner of the New York World. By the way, this man goes by the name Joseph Pulitzer. She started the paper so that she would have a forum to fight back. The lesson here is that there is no such thing as a media outlet without some agenda. Sure, they may not be conspiring with governments, but there is an agenda. It's important to keep that in mind.
Anyway I don't think they are really ready to be a suitable replacement to the NYT quite yet, but if the NYT goes bust and Salon were to scoop up some of the talent and merge with a couple other independent outlets they might be able to put together something good.