New York Times Running On Fumes

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/10/new-york-times-nyt-running-on-fumes

by ashishk • 18 years ago

46 42 18 years ago

This is sad news, even more so since NYT is likely to be rated as junk by Moody's... There aren't many ways out of this kind of mess.

http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSN23458880200810...

chris11• 18 years ago

Standard and Poor's just rated the bond as junk yesterday evening. Hopefully they find some way to make money, NYT is basically the only newspaper I read. http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSN23535859200810...

randrews2• 18 years ago

I wonder how much their situation would improve by opening up their archive for free and removing the registration stuff? They'd get vastly more page views, and thus more ad revenue.

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.

timr• 18 years ago

They'd probably die just as quickly.

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....

ryanb• 18 years ago

Craigslist has killed the classified markets dead x 100. This is huge for newspapers and not to be overlooked.

wensing• 18 years ago

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.

netcan4• 18 years ago

I would call that admitting defeat to an extent.

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.

andreyf3• 18 years ago

I would call that admitting defeat to an extent.

There is no shame admitting defeat if you're doing it wrong.

sethg2• 18 years ago

Isn't the archive free already?

randrews2• 18 years ago

According to their FAQ, it costs money.

sdurkin2• 18 years ago

Alright, time to strap on some plums. Dump the print division entirely, get rid of registration for the front page articles, and start charging for premium content.

netcan4• 18 years ago

Be the first non pornographic pay site to make money.

sdurkin2• 18 years ago

WSJ makes decent money from paid online subscriptions.

hugh2• 18 years ago

Or take a leaf out of the London newspapers, and blend news with pornography.

Alex39172• 18 years ago

Serves them right for covering up the illegal wiretapping story to help Bush win reelection. The sooner they are out of business the better. I personally prefer to get my news from sources that don't conspire with the government to promote genocide and the erosion of civil liberties.

jm42• 18 years ago

Would you care to share any of those sources? I'm just curious. I've been trying to get away from the Reuters/AP stuff myself and discovered The Christian Science Monitor a while back. Despite the name it's not a religious paper. Anyway, they employ their own staff of investigative reporters around the world and do not rely on AP or Reuters. Their news is not updated as frequently, but the content selection and writing is top notch. I was very impressed.

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.

Alex39172• 18 years ago

Personally I like Salon. They don't publish very often, but unlike newspapers I don't find blatant errors in all the subjects I know anything about. Their investigative journalism is pretty good too; they've covered everything from NetHack to what really happened at Columbine HS. IIRC they even broke the bridge to nowhere story and were the first to publish the Abu Ghraib photos. It doesn't really have any agenda. The columnists tend to be socially liberal, but it's clear the beliefs they're expressing are their own and not just what they're told to write about. Think of it like Jon Stewart in newspaper form.

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.

s3graham2• 18 years ago

Seems like something Google should actually buy for the content-making-people. Maybe there's just too much debt though, and they can just hire the people directly.

hugh2• 18 years ago

I doubt the people are worth that much. Staff journalists don't vary _that_ much in quality (though editorial standards do) and there's tons of fresh meat coming out of j-school every year.

The most valuable asset that the New York Times has is its brand. Well, that and a big honking New York skyscraper.

s3graham2• 18 years ago

Interesting. I honestly don't really know how newspapers work, but I feel like TNYT has something that's an order of magnitude better than most papers that just republish AP crap. Maybe I'm just misled by the brand though.

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. :)

patrickg-zill• 18 years ago

"Mediasaurus" by Michael Crichton. Google it.

redorb• 18 years ago

I don't understand the business, it shouldn't take more than 50 writers to write a paper, pay them 100k , that's 5mm sell 500k subcriptions at 50/yr that's 25mm

And that's not counting ads (or printing cost) perhaps they cancel out though

anthonyrubin• 18 years ago

The NYT has a circulation of 1,077,256. Delivery is anywhere from $3.35 per week to $6.70 per week depending on frequency of delivery. Obviously many people just buy single copies at newsstands. They employ 11,965 people including 350 staff writers.

evilneanderthal• 18 years ago

I was going to say something intelligent, but all I came up with was:

How many NYT employees does it take to screw in a light bulb? About 11,615.

andreyf3• 18 years ago

How about this - fire everyone but the writers and a couple of great managers, sell all of the office space. Meet at Starbucks, if you need to, and organize everything over e-mail.

Caligula2• 18 years ago

They wont go bankrupt. They are the closest thing to the worlds premier newspaper. If the company was distressed they could sell it in a heartbeat.

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.

fallentimes• 18 years ago

Let me tell you about this premier railroad company.

gaius• 18 years ago

There are a lot of papers who can reasonably make that claim (e.g. The Times here in England). The problem, structually, is that newspapers in general are retailers of wholesale product provided by PA, AFP, Reuters, etc etc. Their value-add is in their original content, and that tends to be quite localised i.e. it doesn't scale. I worked in Manhattan for a while, I still have friends there, I enjoy reading that content in the NYT but I've no plans to go back and I wouldn't pay for that content (tho' I will see ads which I will ignore). Original content is expensive to produce. That is the problem for newspapers.

pmorici2• 18 years ago

They should sell their presses and go to a Print on demand model. They could have special NYT dispensers at kiosks that allow you to choose which stories you want to read and makes a custom newspaper with ads targeted to match for each patron. Then over time it should learn each readers tastes and recommend stories. Google news for the unwired world. Vendors would rent the specialized printing machines from NYT for the privileged of being able to sell the worlds premier news paper.

sethg2• 18 years ago

Setting up those kiosks, even in New York City alone, would require a massive capital expenditure; the NYT company doesn't have the cash to spend, and this is not exactly the best time to raise investment for such a project.

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."

pmorici2• 18 years ago

If you did it right I think it would work.

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.

iamelgringo• 18 years ago

I've been fascinated by this question for a while, and my interest has been piqued since hearing the Technology in Journalism session presentation at DjangoCon.

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.

brandnewlow2• 18 years ago

Such as?

tyohn• 18 years ago

I use to work for a newspaper. At the time (might show my age here) newspapers were switching from traditional cut and paste/film-plate production to digital composition. I had to push and push just get the newspaper to think about stopping the use of knives to cut and paste content and start using digital layouts. The management basically refused to change. Being inside the industry I know they saw the digital age coming - and even though they knew it was inevitable - just like the Trains business of yesterday that didn't realize that they were transportation companies not just train companies - newspapers took to long to understand that they are more than print. From my point of view newspapers should have lead the drive to the online content world instead they stuck to their print... Like I've heard before - its easier to kill a business than it is to fix it.

brandnewlow2• 18 years ago

The quote I always hear about that from Rob Curley is something like this:

"We're in the newspaper business, and for too long people have been stuck on the second part of that word."

New York Times Running On Fumes

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