{"id":258885,"date":"2014-06-21T16:43:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-21T21:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=258885"},"modified":"2024-01-27T16:44:21","modified_gmt":"2024-01-27T21:44:21","slug":"the-new-york-times-innovation-report-is-great-but-it-left-out-one-very-important-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2014\/06\/21\/the-new-york-times-innovation-report-is-great-but-it-left-out-one-very-important-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"The New York Times innovation report is great, but it left out one very important thing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A shockwave hit the media industry in May, when an internal \u201cinnovation report\u201d<\/a> prepared for New York Times<\/em> executives leaked to BuzzFeed. The report makes for fascinating reading, in part because it is a snapshot of a massive media entity that is caught in the throes of wrenching change, unsure how to proceed. But while it contained many things of value<\/a>, it glossed over one of the most important factors for the paper\u2019s success \u2014 and that is whether the content itself, the journalism that the New York Times<\/em> produces, needs to change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This question came up recently in a post by Thomas Baekdal<\/a>, an author and media analyst. In it, Baekdal made the point that the \u201cquality journalism\u201d the innovation report continually refers to \u2014 the bedrock, foundational value of the New York Times<\/em> \u2014 is never questioned. In other words, it is assumed that the journalism itself is fine as is, and all that needs to happen is that the paper has to do a better job of marketing it and engaging with readers around it. But is that true? Baekdal says:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cThis is something I hear from every single newspaper that I talk with. They are saying the same thing, which is that their journalistic work is top of the line and amazing. The problem is \u2018only\u2019 with the secondary thing of how it is presented to the reader. And we have been hearing this for the past five to ten years, and yet the problem still remains. There is a complete and total blind spot in the newspaper industry that part of the problem is also the journalism itself.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Not just what kind of journalism, but how<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Baekdal\u2019s point isn\u2019t that the New York Times<\/em> produces bad or low-quality content, but just that the paper should be questioning how it reports and writes that content, and whether it meets the needs of the market \u2014 just as it is questioning whether its current business model and\/or industrialized printing process meets the needs of the market. It\u2019s not a trivial question, but it doesn\u2019t really appear anywhere in the innovation report, at least not in any depth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"New<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This argument got some support this week from an interesting participant: Martin Nisenholtz, the former head of digital operations for the Times<\/em> \u2014 the man who not only started the paper\u2019s website in 1996, but later drove the acquisition of About.com and other innovative efforts on the digital side. In a blog post<\/a>, Nisenholtz defended Baekdal, and also provided a fascinating glimpse into what could have been an alternate future for the New York Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nisenholtz, now a consultant and journalism professor, describes an interview<\/a> that Henry Blodget gave to the creators of the Digital Riptide project<\/a> (a group that included Nisenholtz). The former NYT executive said that one of the things he liked the most about Blodget\u2019s interview was how optimistic he was about the future of journalism in the digital age \u2014 in large part because there is so much more of it than ever before, and much of it is of fairly high quality:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cWe are awash in news from an almost infinite number of global sources, much of it of very high quality. For this reason, news providers can no longer force their readers to \u201ceat spinach.\u201d Instead, they need to work hard to entice readers with relevant and interesting content, structured for easy access. In a world of almost unlimited choice, the reader is king.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The Times is no longer alone<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As Nisenholtz suggests, that reality is the primary challenge the New York Times<\/em> is facing: not just that it has to de-emphasize print and adapt to digital, or do a better job of engaging with readers around its content (although it very much has to do all of those things) but that it has to somehow grapple with the fact that it is no longer one of a privileged few \u2014 a tiny number of exalted media and journalism producers with a one-way pipe directly into the homes of readers, and therefore a large share of a kind of information oligopoly.New York Times building logo, photo by Rani Molla<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, the Times<\/em> is just one player in a vast and differentiated media landscape \u2014 one that makes the previous era look like the Pleistocene Age. Not only does every traditional publisher now have access to the exact same market that the NYT does, but there are a host of new and more nimble players with the same access: dedicated news apps like Circa or Yahoo\u2019s news digest, mobile readers like Flipboard and Zite, and digital-only publishers like BuzzFeed and more recent entrants such as Vox. Many of them do journalism in a completely different way. Nisenholtz\u2019s view from 20 years ago is even more appropriate now:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cMy feeling at that time (and today) was that \u2018quality\u2019 was \u2013 in large part \u2013 a function of the user experience, and that \u2013 particularly in the dial-up world of the mid-90s \u2013 Yahoo was doing that best for exactly the reasons that Baekdal outlines. Putting a newspaper on the web seemed very limiting.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The competing product that is good enough<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Many of those who work at the New York Times<\/em> (and other legacy media organizations) no doubt console themselves by thinking that while their newer, digital-only competitors may be more technologically savvy, their product \u2014 i.e., their journalism \u2014 is inferior. And that may even be true in some cases. But as any student of disruption theory knows, the most dangerous competitor isn\u2019t the one whose product is better than yours, it\u2019s the one whose product is good enough<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"tigers<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For many readers \u2014 especially those who only want to get a brief update about what is happening in the world, or who want news that is tailored to them in some way, or news that has more of a point of view \u2014 will likely look to other outlets, even if the objective \u201cquality\u201d of the Times<\/em>\u2018 journalism is arguably better. This is the point I think Baekdal is making when he says that newspapers<\/a> like the Times<\/em> take more of a supermarket approach to journalism than their competitors. The market\u2019s needs have changed, and it\u2019s not clear whether the Times<\/em> can change quickly enough to meet them (although apps like NYTNow and features like The Upshot are interesting experiments, and the Times deserves credit for trying them).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to his thoughts on the state of digital media, Nisenholtz also describes a fascinating moment 20 years ago<\/a> that could have changed the face of online media: as he describes it, when his digital team asked for financial resources to start the website, he also asked for a small sum to finance a \u201cskunk works\u201d research lab to experiment with the web \u2014 but his request was ultimately denied. At one point, Nisenholtz says, one member of the team even suggested that the Times<\/em> should buy Yahoo (he says \u201cwe would probably have screwed it up,\u201d but I\u2019m not sure he could have done a worse job than a series of a Yahoo CEOs have).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imagine what might have happened if the Times<\/em> had started that lab when the web was young \u2014 what innovations could it have developed? What new directions could it have found for all that high-quality journalism? And now, the paper struggles to catch up to a market for digital news that may be permanently out of reach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Getty Images \/ Mario Tama, as well as Rani Molla and Flickr user Abysim<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A shockwave hit the media industry in May, when an internal \u201cinnovation report\u201d prepared for New York Times executives leaked to BuzzFeed. The report makes for fascinating reading, in part because it is a snapshot of a massive media entity that is caught in the throes of wrenching change, unsure how to proceed. But while it contained many things of … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The New York Times innovation report is great, but it left out one very important thing”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":true,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-258885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gigaom"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258885"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258887,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258885\/revisions\/258887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}