Can a Broken New York Times Be Fixed?

Seth Godin, marketing guru extraordinaire, has an interesting post about how the New York Times has missed the boat and is fighting the wrong war (to mix a couple of metaphors). In it, he puts his finger on one of the biggest factors that make it hard for newspapers in general — the one I work for included — to make the transition from paper to digital. It’s not a technical issue, or at least not solely a technical issue, but more of a conceptual shift. There are no limits any more, or at least not the usual ones that have worked for the past century or so, and that’s a difficult thing to grasp.

“All the News That’s Fit to Print” is the heart of the problem. It was never that, of course. It was “All the News That Fits.” The entire mindset of (every) newspaper has been driven by the cost of paper, the finite nature of paper, the cost of delivery and the cycle of a daily paper. You run enough articles to fit as many ads as you can sell.These are artifacts of a different age, one that today’s consumer doesn’t care a whit about.”

That’s a very different world than the one the New York Times grew up in and came to dominate. And Seth has some worthwhile thoughts about ways in which the Times — and, by extension, other newspapers — could be working to extend its brand and value online. Among other things, he suggests leveraging the opinion and editorial pages to help spread important ideas online, as well as making it easier for readers to take your content and share it with others, something I also believe in quite strongly (although the specifics of how to do that are still a work in progress).

I’m not sure buying Yelp or the Zagat guides is the way to go, but that’s the right idea, and so is finding high-quality voices on the Web and giving them a platform, something the Times has already started doing with BlogRunner and its syndication deals with GigaOm and others. My friend Mark Evans, a former newspaperman, thinks the Times should buy Twitter. I’m not convinced that actually owning platforms makes sense — or is even necessary — but I think the Times and other papers could make far more use of them, and smarter use, than they are now.

Would that help to stem the slide that the Times has seen, both in its advertising revenue and in its stock price? That’s impossible to say — but it certainly couldn’t hurt. And for all those who have failed, through no fault of their own, to make the transition, there’s always this.

Comments

[seth godin_:]

Thanks for reading.

I didn't mean they should buy zagats or yelp. I meant they should have started them in the first place!

2008 Nov 24 03:23 PM

[Alex Filonov:]

It's not just NYT. It's the model. All deadwood press is in trouble, at least dailies.

2008 Nov 24 04:08 PM

[Syl:]

I think the NYT should take more of a middle of the road approach to its reporting and especially editorials. I qiuit the NYT years ago because of it extreme liberal bias, especially in its editorials as well as reporting. I read a newspaper if its does not openly show its bias. I avoid news items that slant views of either Conservative or Liberals.

2008 Nov 24 04:19 PM

[old guy:]

THIS PAPER IS WAY WAY TO LIBERAL.....about 95% left 5% center...a great read to laugh at their slant!!!!!

2008 Nov 25 09:23 AM

[swaps:]

Since 9-11 40,000 newspaper jobs have been lost.

That's because people can and do go online and to meetups and learn a lot of documented anomalies about 9-11 that have never seen the light of day in mainstream media.

The media is dying from massaged content.

2008 Nov 26 12:13 AM

[Blair:]

Regarding old guy's comment, I agree fully. The NYT has sat on a liberal political position so long they have driven off even the moderates, of which I put myself in that category.

I put the NYT and the Washington Post, and the LA Times in the same category -- I don't trust the reporting. The reporting does not lie, it lies by not reporting all of the facts as is applies to a given typically political article.

I don't care whether the reporting is done digitally or on paper, the trust is gone that the NYT is dispassionate in its reporting.

While I think of it, it also appears that the Wall Street Journal is going down the same road since it was taken over by Murdoch.

Long term, the NYT will end up being a local newspaper pandering to the northeast liberal. The California liberal market is already served by SF and LA liberal papers. One can draw their own conclusions as to the economic viability of the NYT.

2008 Nov 29 04:37 PM