Watching the Times struggle (and what you can learn)

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/11/watching-the-ti.html

by bdfh42 • 18 years ago

34 13 18 years ago

sethgodin.typepad.com

ram1024• 18 years ago

long story short, if media is your business, and media is changing, you'd best change with it because its not going to wait around for you.

seems like common sense, but i guess when you get to be old and venerable you also acquire a stance of complacency. no one is invulnerable however. seth should have reminded nytimes of their mortality about five years ago.

WarTheatre• 18 years ago

All businesses need to embrace change. But too often people forget that change is a mindset belonging to individual people and that it therefore needs to be constantly re-rooted in the organization to actually stay relevant. If your organization doesn't remember to embrace change (document your practices!), if it doesn't constantly re-roots itself with regard to change (challenge the way you embrace change), it will become obsolete.

Regards,

WarTheatre

rustartup• 18 years ago

"And almost without exception, organizations are run by people who want to protect the old business, not develop the new one."

Even this alone is enough for a smart startup to succeed in the field of horrible and established competition

unalone• 18 years ago

Yep! It can even win against other start-ups that way.

Inertia is a terrible thing for a business.

(As an aside: this is a really excellent article, and I'm not used to that from Seth Godin. That was a very pleasant surprise.)

Xichekolas• 18 years ago

While he had some excellent points (and I even normally avoid Seth Godin), it seems like the easiest thing they could do is drop their registration requirement and try to syndicate their content (and hence brand) more.

Having your content out there in every possible form is going to lead more people back to your actual site, where you make money on their eyeballs. (If this wasn't the case, then guest columnists wouldn't exist and actors wouldn't promote their movies on late night shows.)

And having the stupid registration wall just turns people away. Sure, it's a very low barrier that I'm happy to surmount for a good article, but there have been many times that I have avoided a nytimes.com article because I just felt too lazy to hit up bugmenot for a fake account. They have kind of gotten away with it because they have a name and decent content, but now that you can find lots of decent content elsewhere, it's just going to hurt them.

kiplinger• 18 years ago

Aside from the new media concerns, the Times' left slant has definitely cost them a chunk of their old base, not a lot, but some. There used to be a lot of conservative democrat types who used to read the Old Gray Lady, but they no longer do.

Granted the Palin types will never read the Times and never have, but that 10-15% of their readserhip that is gone hurts. It hurts a lot.

petergroverman2• 18 years ago

What can Old Media do now to survive? Or is it to late?

tocomment• 18 years ago

Smart guy. Seems companies should hire him for millions of dollars to give them advice.

netcan• 18 years ago

They do: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6909078385965257294

petergroverman2• 18 years ago

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2008/11/21/market-pl...

Jasber• 18 years ago

I recently quit from a company that was heavily tied to the Newspaper industry. We dealt with thousands of small to medium sized papers.

The sad truth is most of these organizations just don't "get it."

I remember one newspaper called because another newspaper was linking to their content. They were furious. They somehow correlated other sites linking to their site as "stealing visitors." This paper wasn't stealing content or using any more than allowed, simply linking.

They complain about craigslist taking their classifieds business away while higher-quality niche sites are stealing what little they do have left (pets, autos, houses).

They make partnerships with Yahoo! and are basically giving away their content in return for peanuts (including giving jobs to HotJobs).

They focus on national news when they should be dominating their local market.

The list goes on and on. These people are a dying breed--practically begging to be taken over by faster, leaner, smarter competitors who have 1/10th the staff and no multi-million dollar printing presses to pay off.

You wonder why newspapers are suffering? Its because 95% of them still don't "get it."

upton• 18 years ago

"Today's Sunday magazine has a cover story on Jennifer Aniston. Of course!"

I think that comment is a little disingenuous. The Times obviously used Aniston to draw people in, but the content of this week's Sunday Magazine is focused on the same exact issues that Godin is referring to in his post, in this case in relation to motion pictures:

"This year, we’ve stretched the issue to reflect a new reality: when you watch moving pictures these days, a theater is the last place you are likely to be. Cable, YouTube, DVDs, DVR, news briefs in the elevator and cartoons on your cellphone — through a variety of media, we now consume fragmented narratives on multiple screens."

The Times is full of smart people, and they obviously aren't oblivious the changes print media is going through that is similar to what movie/television/video based media is going through. They've already taken small steps in the right direction with introducing editor blogs + comments, etc. More needs to be done, but the trick is finding the happy medium between providing an engaging envrionment while at the same time keeping quality of the publication at a high enough level. That certainly isn't as easy as Godin makes is sound.

bbgm• 18 years ago

IMO the times is trying, with their APIs, which are a good start. They're just a couple of years late. If you look at their tech side (open source libraries, great election map, etc), they have the people and tech to make it happen. It's a question of management will and understanding.

Watching the Times struggle (and what you can learn)

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