How Not to Save The New York Times
Felix Salmon’s post on how not to save The New York Times is excellent. From where I sit, The New York Times Company really seems, unlike General Motors or Citigroup, to be an example of a company whose underlying situation is reasonably sound but where short-term credit issues are preventing them from riding out a temporary economic downturn that’s bad for everyone’s business.
The way I think about it is that the Internet is forcing a structural transformation in the news business. There will almost certainly be less overall profit in that field than there has been in the past. And rather than hundreds and hundreds of for-profit medium-sized English-language news sources we’ll probably consolidate to a handful of really big ones plus millions of really small ones, most of which will be hobbyist or non-profit ventures. And the New York Times seems well-positioned to take advantage of that situation. It has an unparalleled capacity to do actual news-gathering and it also has one of the strongest brands—if not the strongest brand—in the business. The same forces that are bad for “newspapers” are quite possibly good for the best newspaper since it’s now trivially easy for people to read the Times in Bakersfield or Belfast or Bombay or Brisbane at the same time that more and more people in Bruges and Bergen and even Beijing are getting used to reading things in English.
But for that to work, the company has to stay in business long enough for competitors to fold so it can take advantage of the vacuum. And it needs to not lose its core assets—its brand and its reporting capabilities—while riding the problems out.
51 Responses to “How Not to Save The New York Times”
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January 22nd, 2009 at 1:40 pm
I’m glad people are linking to this article, because the Blodget piece really is ludicrous. Who needs editors! Let’s make money on subscriptions! Does he really think no one else has tried these ‘brilliant’ plans?
January 22nd, 2009 at 1:55 pm
It’s worth pointing out that nytimes.com has also done some pretty awesome and innovative web 2.0 stuff. it’s a great site that blends a traditional layout with really cool technology.
January 22nd, 2009 at 1:56 pm
From where I sit, The New York Times Company really seems, unlike General Motors or Citigroup, to be an example of a company whose underlying situation is reasonably sound but where short-term credit issues are preventing them from riding out a temporary economic downturn that’s bad for everyone’s business.
Really? A print newspaper is a sound business? If it’s such a cash cow, how do you think they piled up all that debt in the first place? Newspapers are going down unless they find a better business model.
January 22nd, 2009 at 2:03 pm
> And rather than hundreds and hundreds of for-profit
> medium-sized English-language news sources we’ll probably
> consolidate to a handful of really big ones plus millions
> of really small ones, most of which will be hobbyist or
> non-profit ventures.
Local traditional press seems to get left out of these analyses. Our community biweekly, metro weekly “alternative”, and metro monthly foodie tabloids all seem to be doing fine – it is our metro daily that is dying due to both circulation decline and horrendous business decisions. People like newspapers when they **provide useful content along with the ads**.
January 22nd, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Re Matthew’s comment “And the New York Times seems well-positioned to take advantage of that situation. It has an unparalleled capacity to do actual news-gathering and it also has one of the strongest brands—if not the strongest brand—in the business.”
—————
I disagree. The Times postures as a “liberal newspaper” a la the Guardian but I think many liberals have concluded that the Times is a pack of lying shitheads and have cancelled their subscriptions.
Look at the Times’ stock chart.
The Times’ stock started its nosedive from around $50 to today’s $5.65 at around the time we discovered that the Times’ Judith Miller had helped Scooter Libby and Dick Cheney lie us into the Iraq War.
Some of us judged well before then that the Times was grossly misleading its American readers in order to support Israel.
E.g., when the Times argued around Sept 23, 2001 that Israel’s attacks on Muslim Palestinians was not a motivation for the Sept 11 attack — when the Times own archives had Bin Laden interviews in 1997-98 citing Israeli aggression as one of three major reasons for Al Qaeda’s war on the US.
Bin Laden reiterated that grievance in a Nov 2001 interview but the Times also refused to publish any notice of that Bin Laden statement.
January 22nd, 2009 at 2:10 pm
I agree that the New York Times brand should be well-positioned to emerge as a major player from the structural transformation of the news business.
However, I suspect that the New York Times and others are going to have be learn to relinquish some of their highly centralized control over precisely what defines that brand, and relax some old cultural habits. The emerging big players are going to be more thoroughly globalized news networks that are participating in an emerging global culture. The expertise required is a system of globalized information gathering and quality control for investigating, finding, checking, corroborating information, and uploading it rapidly, but with editorial discipline, and then distributing it through a network of localized subsidiary operations according to tailored local needs, but with common global core. I assume its going to be something like a traditional news service, but more diversified and with richer content options. It will be more impersonal, more dependent on independent contractors and free-lancers, and less star-driven. If the New York Times wants to make such a move, but insists on maintaining that toney Manhattanite “feel” with a stable of famous reporter-auteurs with worshiped bylines, I suspect their brand will be seen as increasingly provincial.
The Times also seems traditionally to exercise an imperious impulse toward “controlling the narrative”, and presenting a broadly coherent New York Times view of the world. That is just no longer possible in such a diversified and critically open environment. They are going to have to focus on making sure what is reported is true and accurate, but not turning away discordant reportage, and then allow the stories to tell themselves.
January 22nd, 2009 at 2:13 pm
The NYT is one of those brands with enough clout that it will see the tough times through. What I do think is that most newspaper/media companies are going to have to go private to remain viable. It’s entirely possible to remain reasonably profitable in the current environment, but newspapers aren’t going to be able to produce the double-digit income growth that the markets demand while still remaining independent and true to their missions.
January 22nd, 2009 at 2:20 pm
I think the New York Times is pretty much doomed in the long run. One of the problems is that comparing it to such liberal staples as the British Guardian is problematic because we are talking about essentially two different types of newspapers; the New York Times still maintains itself as primarily a pure news sort of paper, while the leading British papers like Guardian and Telegraph have very much moved into the lifestyle fold. A look at the quality and fluidity of writing in the Guardian, compared to the Times, will confirm this; British papers just make for much more enjoyable reading. They are very much papers upper-middle-class people read with relative leisure and ease.
It will be able to flourish as sort of “news through the toney voice of Manhattan”, but I cannot imagine how this would be reconciled with the Grey Lady’s mission as the gatekeeper of the news establishment.
January 22nd, 2009 at 2:22 pm
For those who think that the New York Times is less then liberal today, consider what it would look like if it were purchased by Rupert Murdock who is apparently scheming to buy it.
January 22nd, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Felix Salmon’s errs when he says “But the NYT’s editors are its most important employees: as a paper of record, it’s vastly more important that the NYT bends over backwards to be error-free than it is that Blodget, say, not make any mistakes. The New York Times is the most scrutinized newspaper in the world: it needs its editors.”
—————
1) We , the readers, could accept occasional errors that are corrected within a day or two by updates. Although suggesting the Times is close to being error free is hilarious.
2) But What we can NOT accept is what I see as the NY Times’ continual drive to con us — to manipulate public opinion not by what it openly says on the editorial page but by what it reports — and REFUSES to report – on its news pages.
If i want to read a misleading unbalanced narrative with cherry-picked info and a lot swept under the rug, I can watch Fox News — they’re more amusing and more open about how they’re trying to scam us.
3) In my opinion, the Times strongly attempts to mislead the American electorate not so much by publishing openly false info — but by covering up and refusing to acknowledge MAJOR important facts and events that don’t fit the one-sided narrative and political consensus that it tries to inject into our minds. I consider the Times to be the Con Artist of American publishing.
January 22nd, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Re SLC’s comment “For those who think that the New York Times is less then liberal today, consider what it would look like if it were purchased by Rupert Murdock who is apparently scheming to buy it.”
————–
I don’t care if the New York Times dies — because if that happens, then a REAL liberal paper will have room to rise and grow.
By “liberal” I mean one with a respect for the truth and a devotion to taking a clear-eyed look at the facts and reality — vice the right wing’s devotion to selling lies and useful myths.
A liberal paper , in other words, that respects its readers and fellow citizens — instead of seeing them as a herd of stupid cattle to be stampeded too and fro.
Of course, no liberal would ever place his trust in one source of information.
January 22nd, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Re Don Williams
By “liberal” I mean one with a respect for the truth and a devotion to taking a clear-eyed look at the facts and reality — vice the right wing’s devotion to selling lies and useful myths.
You mean like the blogs resident Bolshevik and paranoid trying to sell the lie that the Government of Israel favored the Iraq invasion. Lawrence Wilkerson, who was there says it didn’t happen. Sharon sent Netanyahu to lobby Congress only after it became clear that his advice against the Iraq invasion was not going to be followed. Another case of Israeli Government officials sucking up to American presidents to curry favor. Phase out aid to Israel and they won’t have to do that again.
January 22nd, 2009 at 3:38 pm
And rather than hundreds and hundreds of for-profit medium-sized English-language news sources we’ll probably consolidate to a handful of really big ones plus millions of really small ones, most of which will be hobbyist or non-profit ventures.
So, assuming that the “millions of really small ones” are basically blogs, isn’t this kind of a disaster for local news? Matt seems to be foreseeing a world where, more or less, there are no regional dailies. While most of the dailies tend to be pretty awful at present, this seems like a really problematic final outcome.
January 22nd, 2009 at 3:40 pm
perhaps they should try to raise equity, targeting their core customers as buyers?
January 22nd, 2009 at 3:51 pm
” If it’s such a cash cow, how do you think they piled up all that debt in the first place? ”
M&A. The Times itself had double digit profit margins until mid 2008 and is still making an operating profit. For all the talk of print’s demise, the dirty secret of publishing is that newspapers are still profitable. Clearly they’re fighting a long term trend (when they should be trying to surf the wave), but even so, operating profit margins at most papers are between 10% and 20%. It was the huge and unsustainable M&A/LBO activity of recent years (eg Tribune Co, McClatchy) that made the fall in print advertising revenues fatal rather than merely painful.
January 22nd, 2009 at 3:55 pm
the New York Times still maintains itself as primarily a pure news sort of paper
Have you ever read the New York Times, Miley? The sections that pay the rent are the ones doing soft news. That’s the tradeoff: the Tiffany and Coach ads pay for the investigative work and foreign bureaus.
Now, there’s a sliver of a point in your babble, which is that you’re more likely to see consolidation down to the national/local model that you see in the British press, and possibly the emergence of regional papers with local variants.
But Henry Blodget was basically proposing the Gawker model of paying writers, combined with a paywall, both of which are dumb, dumb, dumb.
January 22nd, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Matt seems to be foreseeing a world where, more or less, there are no regional dailies.
Regional dailies co-exist with the big nationals in Britain. They’re generally evening papers, don’t have the bulk or the extent of syndicated content, but they’re not going to go away, not least because people still get born, married and die.
January 22nd, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Re SLC’x comment “You mean like the blogs resident Bolshevik and paranoid trying to sell the lie that the Government of Israel favored the Iraq invasion. Lawrence Wilkerson, who was there says it didn’t happen. Sharon sent Netanyahu to lobby Congress only after it became clear that his advice against the Iraq invasion was not going to be followed.”
——————
So Ariel Sharon, Nathanyahu and Shimon Peres lied to the American People and US COngress, but not to George Bush?
Good. From now on, they can go ask George Bush for their $3 Billion/year welfare payment. With 7200+ dead, I don’t see why we should give Israel bumpkus.
PS Larry Wilkinson? Colin Powell’s number 2? Was he the one who helped Colin work up that UN Presentation on Saddam Hussein’s nukes?
Obviously a trustworthy source.
January 22nd, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Re pseudomyous in nc’s comment “Have you ever read the New York Times, Miley? The sections that pay the rent are the ones doing soft news. That’s the tradeoff: the Tiffany and Coach ads pay for the investigative work and foreign bureaus.”
—————
Yep. Helps the NY Times project that “tony Manhattan” image while being the equivalent of a crack whore giving blow jobs in a dirty alley.
But then even the most shopworn whore in NYC calls herself an “escort” and throws out a French phrase now and then. The Johns like that.
January 22nd, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Have you ever read the New York Times, Miley?
With great regularity. My question is, have you ever read the Guardian or the Telegraph? The soft news in NYTimes is pretty substandard and pathetic; the Telegraph, for one, does a much better job of it, and if a reader wanted pure writing he would be well advised to try the [London] Times Literary Supplement. One of the problems with the Times is that its writers are just not very good writers in general. There is very little real literary elegance or wit to be found, and in this age when newspapers being leisure rather than “hard” reading, wit and elegance is not a luxury but a necessity for a readable newspaper.
The problem isn’t the reversion to soft news; its the across-the-board weakness with nothing real to sell except for a) the excellent (in general) reportage and b) the whole quasi-glitzy Manhattan tone which, for the time being, still appeals to some insecure cosmopolites across the world. I was reading about skiing in both the NYTimes and the British national dailies; what really quite got me was how sophomoric the NYTimes article sounded compared to its British cousins in “lifestyle” writing. I mean, if a newspaper can’t write decently about skiing of all things, what can it write about?
January 22nd, 2009 at 4:34 pm
The NYT views itself as in a battle to the death with the WSJ over which will be the national newspaper for the rich (USA Today is the undisputed national newspaper for the middle class). You can get the NYT delivered in cities across the country and it’s available at every airport and chain hotel and at drugstores and newstands everywhere. So is the Journal, which has added lots of “lifestyle” sections and a “weekend” (ie Sunday) paper.
The Times’ reporting and editorial page has moved far to the right because it’s trying to pick off readers that might favor the Journal – wealthy businessmen and professionals in the heartland. Occasionally it makes a nod to its liberal NYC base, but rarely. And since a big part of the NYC readership is Jewish, it feels no need at all to shore up its liberal credentials on the Middle East. Quite the opposite.
But in order to beat the Journal it has to have very thorough and accurate news for readers in business – not just business news, but political news that affects business. Plus it needs sophisticated, up-market fluff – culture, not just kittens.
Neither Blodget nor Salmon (nor Yglesias, for that matter) seem to be aware of the Times’ actual business strategy or the competitive war it’s presently engaged in.
January 22nd, 2009 at 4:37 pm
There is a very unfortunate insularity of mindset when it comes to American papers; in general, Americans have no idea how lacking in art and grace some of their newspaper writers comparatively are.
This is probably due to, and compounded by, the fact that journalism is a rather bizarrely self-important career path in America; you have the august Columbia School of Journalism, which drills into its kids that they are doing some sort of glorious task in the public interest, when they are just writing bloody leisure inches most of the time. This makes their writing and their thinking pedantic, heavy, didactic, inartful, and just plain awful reading.
In Britain there is no such bizarre self-importance; anyone out of Oxbridge can be a journalist, and nobody gives two pins whether some journalist is some “conscientious” self-important pious fool; indeed, the present Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, was a journalist too, and he had a fine and fun time being his true unserious self.
Of course, what we end up over the decades, after this American obsession with “fair-and-balanced” self-important pedantic journalism, is awful and unpleasant newsprint. People don’t want to read the papers, or at least the news in them, because they are so atrociously and heavy-handedly presented. Of all the London papers, only The Independent share the American heaviness and pedantry, and it is in any case universally regarded as some earnest organ of cluelessness (as most upmarket American papers should be); even the Guardian and Telegraph retain some appropriateness and grace of tone when reporting on the grandest news.
January 22nd, 2009 at 4:49 pm
I’m not sure I needed to know that much about your habits, Don.
USA Today’s circulation numbers are, as I recall, highly inflated and suspect due to the sheer number of copies they give out for free at hotels, etc. Maybe the NYT should give more free copies out; certainly works for Gannett.
January 22nd, 2009 at 4:57 pm
I always thought that the national market for the New York Times was made up of the hopelessly aspirational middle classes, not the wealthy.
They (ok, we) don’t real the real estate section because we can afford those multi-million dollar co-ops. We read it because we find such things terribly entertaining.
January 22nd, 2009 at 5:06 pm
My question is, have you ever read the Guardian or the Telegraph?
Oh yes. You presumably read the Torygraph for Peterborough and the letters page, I read it for the sport and the crossword. (The apotheosis of serious newspaper doing frivolity is the FT’s ‘How To Spend It’, of course.)
Now, one reason why the British dailies seem to attract better life/style talent, I’d suggest, is that there’s a very different magazine culture in the UK, in part because of the very different subscription model. If you’re a travel journalist in the US, you’re probably better off working at a glossy than a paper.
Ultimately, though, you’re making a subjective style critique in favour of one that matches your own dandyish self-conception.
Now, Bloix is right about the basic positioning of the NYT, though I’d say it’s more “aspirational middle-class” than “rich”. And Don W, If it takes a $100k glossy ad for handbags to keep open a foreign bureau for six months, I’ll take that deal.
January 22nd, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Re Bloix’s comment “But in order to beat the Journal it has to have very thorough and accurate news for readers in business – not just business news, but political news that affects business.”
—————-
But the NY Times doesn’t do that. Nor does the WSJ, for that matter. The REAL news often doesn’t get reported.
Does anyone think the recent Derivatives crisis sprang fullborn out of Paulson’s forehead on Sept 21, 2008? Why does the NY Times refuse to look at what Senator Bennett and Jim Saxby were doing on the Joint Economic Committee in 2004-2006?
I would dearly love to find a paper that provides information — intel if you will –about what is really going on. The important things. The world addressed in the way that it is addressed in briefings to CEOs or the CIA’s brief to the President. (well, maybe better than that.) The world seen by the Commanders of our Unified Commands.
The problem isn’t government’s security classification. It’s that you can’t produce intelligence if you LACK intelligence. That’s why Felix Salmon’s praise of the TImes’ intellectual capital is so funny.
January 22nd, 2009 at 5:09 pm
anyone out of Oxbridge can be a journalist
…though it helped if Niall Ferguson was your history tutor.
indeed, the present Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, was a journalist too, and he had a fine and fun time being his true unserious self.
Ah, now it makes sense: Boris is your hero and model of emulation. Poop-poop!
January 22nd, 2009 at 5:38 pm
I don’t know if you have grasped this concept; if something isn’t enjoyable reading, people won’t want to read it. It’s not just the lifestyle columns; compare a column on say, affirmative action or education from NYTimes and the Guardian (which is, incidentally, more liberal) and you will immediately see how nauseous American columnists are, even when they could be more effectively talking about some serious thing in a more relaxed manner.
To my mind it’s just stupid, not admirable at all. One of my favourite freelancers, Andrew Martin, wrote an entertaining and uproarious piece about the class system that is simultaneously exceedingly perceptive. This isn’t a zero-sum game, you know. Martin is the sort of writer people actually want to read on a Sunday afternoon, and not just out of Pavlovian Manhattanite habit.
As far as I can discern, there are people who actually get a great deal good, classy amusement out of reading the Grauniad and the Tottygraph (since we are on to nicknames here). Personally, I haven’t been able to do so to the same degree from reading the New York Times for a long time, and I get it for free. Even leaving aside the vexatious question of subscription and market models and whatever, something like the Economist still manages to be wittier than the NYTimes. The Economist! How much sadder can you get? Can’t even beat a thing that has no bylines and is written to cram as much information in as short a piece as possible!
That’s why I feel no sympathy for American journalism. A friend’s parents are terrific NYTimes journalists and they are wonderful people and wonderful professionals. But the profession as a whole is defunct. The graduate journalism schools need to be dismantled and the field of journalism liberalised to make way for witty, talented young things untainted by the pedantic, didactic sanctimony of the journalism academy which defiles the best of writings. You can’t learn journalism as a technical skill; the only thing you end up learning is crude approximations of mechanical nothings.
January 22nd, 2009 at 5:43 pm
“In Britain there is no such bizarre self-importance; anyone out of Oxbridge can be a journalist”
Don’t even have to be Oxbridge these days – although it certainly helps. Even among the elite (ie 100 most prominent journos, editors and broadcasters in the UK), just under half went to Oxbridge according to a study from a couple of years ago.
I do agree with your central point. The building up of journalism as a profession (as opposed to a career) over the last 40 or so years in the US has killed news writing. In all professions of a certain stature and power, the rules and conventions become as much about protecting the profession’s reputation as about propagating its fundamental values. That’s how you come to a situation where being “balanced” is more important than being truthful. Or where the real news consistently gets buried in the tenth paragraph so as not to rock the boat.
January 22nd, 2009 at 6:23 pm
I’ll actually agree with Ginger Yellow that much American journalism comes across as staid and formulaic, especially to those familiar with the London dailies. J-school framing and house style presumably has something to do with that. But there’s also a basic sloppiness among the British broadsheets that often occurs when it’s decided that the factual needs more verbal seasoning.
That includes The Economist, which, as Henry Farrell put it, ‘flatters readers who aren’t quite intelligent enough to realize how shallow it is into thinking that they are more intelligent than they are because they read it.’
Now, it’s cute that Miley shows up in a cravat and acts like he’s the offspring of AA Gill and Boris Johnson, but affectation is wearying.
January 22nd, 2009 at 7:02 pm
Re Don Williams
Well, well, Mr. Williams finally got around to sliming Lawrence Wilkerson, who opposed the Iraq adventure from day 1. Mr. Williams will have to do better then that. And yes, Sharon and Co. did support President Bushes’ lies. As I have stated, they didn’t go to the bathroom over there without getting permission from Bush. Phase out aid to Israel and they will stop sucking up to American presidents (Rabin, Peres, and Netanyahu sucked up to Clinton). Put Uzi Landau in the Prime Ministers’ seat, phase out aid and he will have no difficulty telling President Osama to take a running jump to himself.
January 22nd, 2009 at 7:12 pm
But there’s also a basic sloppiness among the British broadsheets that often occurs when it’s decided that the factual needs more verbal seasoning.
Precisely my point. Newspapers are a business. They have to appeal to people to read them. Verbal seasoning helps get the facts across while not eroding the attraction of newspaper-reading. What’s wrong with that? It’s not sloppiness, it’s intelligence. You can’t possible just put forward dreadfully staid writing and expect people to want to read them!
January 22nd, 2009 at 7:14 pm
“But there’s also a basic sloppiness among the British broadsheets that often occurs when it’s decided that the factual needs more verbal seasoning.”
True enough. I’ve read enough misleading and outright wrong stuff in this financial crisis to last me a life time. But I prefer a setup where multiple confessedly fallible voices can act as a check on each other than one in which a few purportedly infallible and objective voices manufacture a consensus, for want of a better phrase. And as a news writer myself, I wince every time I read an American article that seems to demonstrate no news judgement at all, which is often. That said, American newspapers do still have the edge in long form journalism.
January 22nd, 2009 at 10:40 pm
@Stephen Myles
Are you including, say, George Monbiot or Peggy Toynbee among those gracious and entertainng writers at the Guardian, because if so, let’s just say our tastes differ. But if you mean Marina Hyde, then hup! hup! indeed.
January 22nd, 2009 at 11:22 pm
By God, not Toynbee. She is a horrifying Neanderthal relic.
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:48 am
That said, American newspapers do still have the edge in long form journalism.
I’ll impishly say that every investigative / political beat writer in the top-tier US press is thinking about the Book That Is To Come whenever he/she files.
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:07 am
I’ll impishly say that every investigative / political beat writer in the top-tier US press is thinking about the Book That Is To Come whenever he/she files.
Ahh yes, self-important, pompous fools.
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