{"id":12071,"date":"2017-01-17T04:22:00","date_gmt":"2017-01-17T09:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=12071"},"modified":"2024-11-29T17:57:05","modified_gmt":"2024-11-29T22:57:05","slug":"heres-the-new-york-times-vision-of-what-the-future-looks-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2017\/01\/17\/heres-the-new-york-times-vision-of-what-the-future-looks-like\/","title":{"rendered":"Here’s the New York Times’ vision of what the future looks like"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In a follow-up to the “Innovation Report” it released in 2014, the New York Times<\/em> has published what it calls the 2020 Report, a look at the newspaper’s strategy for success in a digital age. The key to that success appears to be doubling down on its subscription business, and leaving the online page-view race and dependence on platforms to others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One theme that ran through the 2014 report<\/a> was the fear that digital-only publishers like BuzzFeed, Vox and The Huffington Post were farther ahead, and more nimble, than the Times<\/em> was — and that therefore they were getting more digital traffic and a larger audience than the paper thought was its due.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Innovation Report said the Times<\/em> was “falling behind in a critical area: the art and science of getting our journalism to readers. We have always cared about the reach and impact of our work, but we haven’t done enough to crack that code in the digital era.” The report went on to say that the paper needed to pursue “smart new strategies for growing our audience.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By contrast, one of the defining concerns of the 2020 Report<\/a> is getting people to pay<\/em> for the Times’ journalism, rather than just competing for traffic with places like BuzzFeed and Vox . In part, that’s because executive editor Dean Baquet argues that the paper has won. “Today, the most robust of our competitors… are chasing our lead,” he said in a memo<\/a> to Times<\/em> staffers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note<\/strong>: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

David Leonhardt, the creator of The Upshot and leader of the team that produced the current report, said in a Twitter summary<\/a> that one of the major points of the report is that the Times<\/em> “isn’t trying to win a pageviews arms race and sell low-margin ads against the clicks.” This, the report implies, will be left to its digital-only competitors and to Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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10\/ @nytimes<\/a> isn't trying to win a pageviews arms race and sell low-margin ads against the clicks.<\/p>— David Leonhardt (@DLeonhardt) January 17, 2017<\/a><\/blockquote>