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The New News: How The New York Times
Points Towards Tomorrow's Content |
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8 March 2004 |
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Under Martin Nisenholtz
The New
York Times has assembled an impressive array of online
services uniting its core editorial strengths with a wide
array of third party content and features to create a
leading example of a news organization transforming itself
for today's online realities. But what about tomorrow's
realities? Nisenholtz has the vision and the resources to
take the Times into the future, but in a market in which a
news portal has to try very hard to be something much more
than just news and when the nature of news production
itself is changing, the ultimate winners in this battle may
not be a news company as we know them today. |
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It has a broad range of text and
database content from numerous premium sources, Web-wide Google
search and AdSense contextual ads, email alerts, personal and
professional services such as stock portfolio tracking,
discussion groups on a wide variety of topics and numerous
features for special interest groups. AOL? Nope. MSN? Guess
again. It is, of course, the Web portal for
The New York
Times, the "Grey Lady" of U.S. newspapers' online presence
that has gone under the direction of Times Digital CEO Martin
Nisenholtz from a pale, frumpy imitation of its paper-based
presence to one of the leading news portals on the Web today.
The Times is hardly alone in its efforts to bring its online
news operations into the mainstream of what its readers expect
from a premium online portal, but it is certainly one of the
more remarkable transformations to be seen. When one looks into
the inner thoughts of Martin Nisenholtz, as expressed in
his recent speech at the SIIA Executive Summit, it becomes
clear that the unfolding of this vision has only begun.
Economics has a handy way of enforcing
basic truths, so it's a good thing that Martin's on the case.
As state-of-the-art as the Times' approach is by today's portal
standards, it's only the hard truth of competition from more
general and purpose-driven portals, which have thrown content
into a more robust user environment, that drives this effort.
The outlets that control the context control the content, and
those outlets aren't fussy about where the content came from:
whatever works to engage audiences is what goes. This of course
has flown in the face of publications whose brand image is
based on generations of tight editorial control over their
content products. But as much as publications struggle to
continue to define captive content as the core of their
enterprises, leading technologies all point towards this being
largely a vain effort unless it fits within the context of a
wider range of personal and professional audience interests -
many of them well beyond the confines of a browser, much less a
sheet of newsprint. The "where" of content increasingly has far
less to do with a specific physical or digital object as it
does with the context of the audience's goals at the moment
when it's required.
With this in mind, what's the Times or
any other "news portal" publisher of a not-so-distant future
going to look like? Here are a few key and likely attributes:
- No room for a newsroom. The
whole concept of a newspaper revolved around a centralized
production function; even today many newspaper printing
presses are in the same building as their editorial
functions. But in today's electronic content production
environment in which the production functions delivering
content are so diverse and dispersed, there's far less need
for centralized content production staffs. Credible news
outlets with a wide range of content and services can be
fabricated without any newsroom at all (witness my home
town's
WestportNow, built completely on a weblog-based
infrastructure by former CBS News journalist Gordon Joseloff).
As more nimble newsgathering operations build quality
editorial streams without news rooms, their future is as a
clearinghouse for editorial quality control, a function that
will benefit more from the distributed and affiliated
structure of an organization such as the Associated Press
than it will a big bricks-and-mortar container for staff.
Centralized functions will be reserved for those content
components that benefit most from centralized production,
such as multimedia and database experts.
- Welcome free agent journalists.
Big-name journalists have always had the ability to bring
their star billing from one publication to another, but they
have been a relative handful. With technologies such as
weblogs, though, it's easier than ever for accomplished
journalists to strike out on their own and develop an
independent following. Instead of "stringers" being
relatively low on the totem pole of journalism, independent
journalists and other new kinds of content creators are going
to form the core of tomorrow's elite news organizations,
affiliating themselves with specific outlets only when
technology advantages or networking opportunities present
themselves - opportunities that may or may not come from
traditional news organizations. Like today's world of
professional sports, budding talents may develop in any
number of channels, perhaps signing on as news organization
employees for some apprentice period but quickly moving on to
more independent pursuits as opportunities present
themselves.
- Technology drives new editorial
functions. As with free agents in the world of sports,
those with the gold tend to make the rules in attracting
editorial talent, making it far more likely that specific
content producers will be attracted to those outlets that can
afford to place their content in the most effective
distribution possible. While this certainly does not leave
out traditional news organizations, it opens up the door to a
far wider range of players who may be able to leverage
technology to create a new kind of editorial environment.
While content exclusivity will be important to some degree in
this environment, like aggregators everywhere it will be far
less important than the end result the audience wants. This
kind of editorial environment will favor using a wide range
of technological solutions and sources of interactive
knowledge of audience interest to collect and deliver the
right content from the right sources to the right audiences
at the right time. Tomorrow's news portals may resemble
Google News far more than they do any of today's
paper-specific outlets.
With the economics of news publishing
shifting in favor of electronic delivery, leading news
organizations are challenged to define an electronic-first
approach to news generation and aggregation in this shifting
environment that will make paper-specific portals viable. The
Times portal is an excellent example of a news organization
trying to make that shift, blending global and local interests
very effectively. With more aggressive extensions to its
editorial sources and technology it may yet shed the legacy of
yesterday's delivery channels to jump ahead of competing portal
interests. But legacies are not easily shed, even by the most
far-reaching thinkers. If they do? Now that will be news.
-
John Blossom
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