We're living in an exciting time for the media industry. Traditional companies, with their origins in paper-based news distribution, have no choice but to change their business models. The content supply chain, fundamentally, must look something like this:

NYT[ journal -> write -> edit -> publish -> distribute]

Content has to be produced, and it has to be distributed. In general, any piece of content will flow along that chain.

Before the Internet, the "old guard" of media -- The Times, The Post, etc. -- held a monopoly on the entire supply chain. They found the sources, wrote the articles, and even delivered them to your door, printed and ready to read. It would have been difficult for an outside company, or industry, to encroach on any part of the NYT business. Why would the NYT surrender part of such a valuable supply chain? By controlling content from production to distribution, they were able to charge higher prices for it.

But now, the distributive power of the Internet has broken the supply chain in half, resulting in new economic specialization. Buzzfeed beats the NYT in distribution, but the NYT beats Buzzfeed in production quality. Now, the supply chain looks more like:

NYT[ journal -> write -> edit -> publish] -> [distribute]BUZZ

It seems that there is a place for both Buzzfeed and the NYT on the supply chain. One can control, and should specialize in, the production of content. The other can distribute it.

Old media companies are finally "waking up" to the threat of content distribution experts like Buzzfeed. The Guardian, WaPo, and the NYT have fantastic tech departments forming a smart digital strategy. They recognize that yes, Buzzfeed is taking part of their supply chain, but no, Buzzfeed cannot compete with the NYT on journalistic integrity. As long as the NYT employs the staff that it does, with writers of decades of experience and connections in the industries they cover, there will be a demand for NYT content. Some of that demand may come from end-consumers, and some may come from distribution companies like Buzzfeed. But the fact of the matter is, the NYT can still own the production part of the supply chain, and it makes sense to mitigate the threat to their distribution models by selling production "wholesale" to distributors.

This move from the NYT is a great milestone for their digital strategy. They're recognizing that content, like any product, has a supply chain and production process. They know they own the production process, but the Internet has enabled new companies to own downstream parts of the supply chain. So by releasing API's to their raw content, they are providing access to their raw product for any company who might want to sell it.