4 ms·

The thinking and dollars behind The New York Times’ new digital strategy

49 points by mantesso 11y ago

ThomPete 11y ago
I have involved in several news media attempts to go into digital and worked on the launch of two paper newspapers that tried to make it in the early 2000's both failed spectacularly. One of them a high quality, amazing journalists high ambitions for quality content newspaper. The other a free omnibus newspaper to be delivered to almost the entire country (Denmark) I learned something very different from both of them but I draw the same conclusion. News is the reporting of events. Newspapers whether digital or print is in the business of using these events to sell newspapers so they can sell adds. But there are several problems with omnibus news media. - Most traditional news media simply have too many employees. - So called "Quality Journalism" isn't going to save any newspapers. - There are too many newspapers and too many other ways to hear about the actual event. The internet is one big news source. - Making money on advertising require an amount of visitors that are simply not possible for most. There is still room for news but it has to be either much smaller, focused and specialized or have to be one of a few multinational news-source providers that others can use. The omnibus paper is dead.
- PythonicAlpha 11y ago
  Yes, I think, the whole news industry will be changing. Also in my country, the big papers are trying to secure their income streams -- with partially idiotic actions -- for example, they pressed the government to make laws that Google must pay for small text phrases taken from their news side .... but when Google dropped their linking, they also where not amused (they thought, Google would just pay and go on making their linking so, the news corporations just got more money ...) STUPIDITY! Can you explain the phrase "omnibus paper"? Is this a fixed phrase?
  - cloudier 11y ago
    Omnibus means 'pertaining to, including, or dealing with numerous objects or items at once', so an omnibus newspaper is a newspaper that deals with many different sorts of news, such as politics, sports and arts. Paper is a common contraction for newspaper.
    - PythonicAlpha 11y ago
      Thanks, did not know that "omnibus" had this meaning. In my language, "omnibus" is just an old fashioned word for "bus" (transportation) ;) -- translation services are also not all the time helpful.
      - ThomPete 11y ago
        Not sure what language it is but omni is latin and a prefix. It means "all". Like omniscient (all knowing), omnipotent (all powerfull) etc...
        PythonicAlpha 11y ago
        By asking, you can learn.
        ThomPete 11y ago
        It wasn't meant derogative, sorry if it sounded like that :) Not all languages have the same base so it might as well mean something else that I didn't know in your language.
        PythonicAlpha 11y ago
        No offence taken, but thanks!
- brazzledazzle 11y ago
  I would pay a subscription for high quality local investigative journalism (that I can read online) but I fear that it's a model that won't work until people realize what they're missing and how much corruption can flourish if it goes unchecked by journalists.
  - ThomPete 11y ago
    Sure so would I, but not enough people are like you and me. But thats just part of the problem. 1) You are depending on something to actually happen. 2) You are depending on it to be actually interesting 3) With time it will be solved with more transparent processes in the public sphere. 4) Most of the really interesting areas that journalists could cover today they don't have any knowledge of. It's simply too complex and so instead you see people who are experts in their fields report and explain. Newspapers as a seller of events that gets interpreted by journalists and sold to people is a dying industry.
the-dude 11y ago
I am surprised there is no mention of Blendle: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/27/new-york-times-dutch-startup-newspaper-paywall_n_6053224.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/27/new-york-times-dutc...
pgrote 11y ago
I subscribe to the NY Times even though I am in Missouri. The actual weekend subscription with digital was cheaper than digital alone. I've been a subscriber for over a year and enjoy the morning and evening wrap-ups delivered to my phone. What I don't enjoy are the constant, 3 a week, emails trying to get me to add something to the subscription. In fact, they change the offerings often enough I have trouble differentiating what they want me to buy. lol
- brazzledazzle 11y ago
  I get why it happens but the drive to turn every subscription and transaction with a customer into an opportunity to "upsell" is getting tiresome.
- a3n 11y ago
  I subscribe to their digital, and I agreed to the daily email of news items, and one or two other more focused ones. I don't know if I receive the 3 a week upsell emails, because when I see a nyt email in my inbox, it's either the daily news collection that I want, or everything else, which I just delete without reading. Easy.
digital_ins 11y ago
I am appalled that the combination of Digital + Print costs as much or less than the digital subscription alone. NYTimes, WSJ all seem to forget the basic principles of economics which dictate a certain amount of price elasticity is essential to bring in more customers. It seems almost punitive that digital customers pay at par with print customers when the incremental costs for the latter are relatively so minor. If NYTimes is really serious about boosting it's pure digital subscriptions, scaling back the height of the paywall is key - not to a trivial non-zero sum, but to an amount where the pure digital customer doesn't feel ripped off.
- jdavis703 11y ago
  The thing is the paper makes so much money from print advertising that to them it is cheaper to print and deliver papers. It's the old trope people like to recite about social media companies that "you're the product being sold to advertisers." For a variety of reasons your eyeballs are far less valuable online.
  - a3n 11y ago
    Indeed. It's why local papers deliver papers to households that don't even subscribe. It ups the "readership" (which in many cases is really the "throwawayership"), and they can con ad buyers into higher prices. Similar is phone books. I used to live in an apartment building where phone books would be dropped in front of your door at least annually (maybe more, there are more than one phone book company). Residents would passive-aggressively leave them out there on the walk, and maintenance would eventually pick them up. I hadn't had a land line for years, and I got one like all the other residents. But the phone book company can then claim "readership" and sell ads. And now we block ads on the last place where ads can reach us. Ads may survive as a revenue source, but it's going to have to change in some way that most of us can't even imagine. And it's going to have to change for "our" benefit, because we've gotten very used to controlling that stream.
- Qworg 11y ago
  This is following the Economist's model - you create the illusion that the digital+paper is a great deal, which drives your print sales (and more advertising space).
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- a3n 11y ago
  > - but they still show adverts Block them. I never see a NYT ad, in my email or on the web.

49 points by mantesso 11y ago

I have involved in several news media attempts to go into digital and worked on the launch of two paper newspapers that tried to make it in the early 2000's both failed spectacularly. One of them a high quality, amazing journalists high ambitions for quality content newspaper. The other a free omnibus newspaper to be delivered to almost the entire country (Denmark) I learned something very different from both of them but I draw the same conclusion. News is the reporting of events. Newspapers whether digital or print is in the business of using these events to sell newspapers so they can sell adds. But there are several problems with omnibus news media. - Most traditional news media simply have too many employees. - So called "Quality Journalism" isn't going to save any newspapers. - There are too many newspapers and too many other ways to hear about the actual event. The internet is one big news source. - Making money on advertising require an amount of visitors that are simply not possible for most. There is still room for news but it has to be either much smaller, focused and specialized or have to be one of a few multinational news-source providers that others can use. The omnibus paper is dead.

PythonicAlpha 11y ago
Yes, I think, the whole news industry will be changing. Also in my country, the big papers are trying to secure their income streams -- with partially idiotic actions -- for example, they pressed the government to make laws that Google must pay for small text phrases taken from their news side .... but when Google dropped their linking, they also where not amused (they thought, Google would just pay and go on making their linking so, the news corporations just got more money ...) STUPIDITY! Can you explain the phrase "omnibus paper"? Is this a fixed phrase?
- cloudier 11y ago
  Omnibus means 'pertaining to, including, or dealing with numerous objects or items at once', so an omnibus newspaper is a newspaper that deals with many different sorts of news, such as politics, sports and arts. Paper is a common contraction for newspaper.
  - PythonicAlpha 11y ago
    Thanks, did not know that "omnibus" had this meaning. In my language, "omnibus" is just an old fashioned word for "bus" (transportation) ;) -- translation services are also not all the time helpful.
    - ThomPete 11y ago
      Not sure what language it is but omni is latin and a prefix. It means "all". Like omniscient (all knowing), omnipotent (all powerfull) etc...
      - PythonicAlpha 11y ago
        By asking, you can learn.
        ThomPete 11y ago
        It wasn't meant derogative, sorry if it sounded like that :) Not all languages have the same base so it might as well mean something else that I didn't know in your language.
        PythonicAlpha 11y ago
        No offence taken, but thanks!
brazzledazzle 11y ago
I would pay a subscription for high quality local investigative journalism (that I can read online) but I fear that it's a model that won't work until people realize what they're missing and how much corruption can flourish if it goes unchecked by journalists.
- ThomPete 11y ago
  Sure so would I, but not enough people are like you and me. But thats just part of the problem. 1) You are depending on something to actually happen. 2) You are depending on it to be actually interesting 3) With time it will be solved with more transparent processes in the public sphere. 4) Most of the really interesting areas that journalists could cover today they don't have any knowledge of. It's simply too complex and so instead you see people who are experts in their fields report and explain. Newspapers as a seller of events that gets interpreted by journalists and sold to people is a dying industry.

the-dude 11y ago

I am surprised there is no mention of Blendle: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/27/new-york-times-dutch-startup-newspaper-paywall_n_6053224.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/27/new-york-times-dutc...

pgrote 11y ago

I subscribe to the NY Times even though I am in Missouri. The actual weekend subscription with digital was cheaper than digital alone. I've been a subscriber for over a year and enjoy the morning and evening wrap-ups delivered to my phone. What I don't enjoy are the constant, 3 a week, emails trying to get me to add something to the subscription. In fact, they change the offerings often enough I have trouble differentiating what they want me to buy. lol

brazzledazzle 11y ago
I get why it happens but the drive to turn every subscription and transaction with a customer into an opportunity to "upsell" is getting tiresome.
a3n 11y ago
I subscribe to their digital, and I agreed to the daily email of news items, and one or two other more focused ones. I don't know if I receive the 3 a week upsell emails, because when I see a nyt email in my inbox, it's either the daily news collection that I want, or everything else, which I just delete without reading. Easy.

digital_ins 11y ago

I am appalled that the combination of Digital + Print costs as much or less than the digital subscription alone. NYTimes, WSJ all seem to forget the basic principles of economics which dictate a certain amount of price elasticity is essential to bring in more customers. It seems almost punitive that digital customers pay at par with print customers when the incremental costs for the latter are relatively so minor. If NYTimes is really serious about boosting it's pure digital subscriptions, scaling back the height of the paywall is key - not to a trivial non-zero sum, but to an amount where the pure digital customer doesn't feel ripped off.

jdavis703 11y ago
The thing is the paper makes so much money from print advertising that to them it is cheaper to print and deliver papers. It's the old trope people like to recite about social media companies that "you're the product being sold to advertisers." For a variety of reasons your eyeballs are far less valuable online.
- a3n 11y ago
  Indeed. It's why local papers deliver papers to households that don't even subscribe. It ups the "readership" (which in many cases is really the "throwawayership"), and they can con ad buyers into higher prices. Similar is phone books. I used to live in an apartment building where phone books would be dropped in front of your door at least annually (maybe more, there are more than one phone book company). Residents would passive-aggressively leave them out there on the walk, and maintenance would eventually pick them up. I hadn't had a land line for years, and I got one like all the other residents. But the phone book company can then claim "readership" and sell ads. And now we block ads on the last place where ads can reach us. Ads may survive as a revenue source, but it's going to have to change in some way that most of us can't even imagine. And it's going to have to change for "our" benefit, because we've gotten very used to controlling that stream.
Qworg 11y ago
This is following the Economist's model - you create the illusion that the digital+paper is a great deal, which drives your print sales (and more advertising space).

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

a3n 11y ago
> - but they still show adverts Block them. I never see a NYT ad, in my email or on the web.