A select group of journalists from the New York Times called
the 2020 Group found that the Times
has declining revenues. In its report,
published on nytimes.com, the journalists said this is due in large part to the
weakness of demand for print media (Leonardt et al., 2017) and the move to get
information from electronic sources, the internet and apps, etc. The Times
has recognized this issue for many years now. It has been aggressively
responding for at least three years, following the publication of the
Innovation Committee’s 2014 report, written by a team of Times management and staff (Leonardt et al., 2017). However, it has not been able to grow the
revenue streams from new sources as fast as the revenue from the printed
newspapers has fallen (Ellison, 2016).
Sarah Ellison wrote the article Can
Anyone Save the New York Times from Itself? for Vanity Fair, an American
monthly magazine of pop culture, fashion, and politics published by Condé Nast
Publications. Ms. Ellison has written on
many other journalism topics for Vanity Fair.
The users of the New
York Times content have been fragmenting over time. They are going online to the website, into
Cooking and Crossword specialty-focused services, and into other vendor’s
products (Ellison, 2016).
In reaction, the New York Times Company has expanded into other
revenue streams. It has also done numerous
things to reduce costs including dismissing70 employees working in Paris in
May, 2016 (Ellison, 2016).
As mentioned earlier, it recently assigned a group of seven
journalists (the 2020 Group) to review its situation and produce a paper on the
newsroom’s principles, priorities and goals (Journalism That Stands Apart). According to Baquet and Kahn (2017), who
represent the company’s management team, the action plan resulting from the
2020 Group’s report includes:
1. A smaller and more focused newsroom. This means layoffs.
2. Increasing coverage of the Trump administration and the new world order with an investment of five million dollars dedicated to that.
3. Reinventing editing to reduce the time it takes and associated dollar costs.
4. Making a more visual presentation of the daily report. This includes more videographers and photographers with more influence on the results.
5. Expanding training, especially on new technologies like visual journalism. This will be focused to support the other initiatives.
6. Creating thematic teams to focus on topics like Cooking, Climate Change, Gender, etc. The teams will be dynamic, forming and disbanding as topics need focus.
7. Getting serious about talent by acquiring and retaining successful journalists.
8. Reinventing features and giving more emphasis to softer, buzzier and funnier writing.
9. Freshening the thinking about coverage at many news desks.
Its plan for the newsroom contains more items and more
detail. It has already started to execute
many of these plans (Baquet & Kahn, 2017).
Ellison (2016) looks at the culture in the newsroom, and
points out that the staff is very much driven by what is “well regarded on the
inside, outsiders be damned.” But, she
points out that what is well regarded on the inside is changing, and commercial
thinking about the news is gaining favor.
The Times’ editor, Dean Baquet, even went so far as to
acknowledge “The Times of the future
will no longer be the paper of record on everything, but only in the areas it
can afford to be.”
The Times has a
plan and is executing on it. It is not
clear that there are enough revenues available to the New York Times Company
from digital and new revenue streams to replace the declining print
subscription and advertising revenue, while maintaining the investment in the
newsroom needed to maintain the high quality of their journalism. Only time will tell.
References
Baquet, D., & Kahn, J. (2017, January 17). From Dean
Baquet and Joe Kahn: The Year Ahead. Retrieved February 11, 2017, from http://www.nytco.com/from-dean-and-joe-the-year-ahead/
Ellison, S. (2016, June 1). Can anyone save the New York Times
from itself? Retrieved February 13, 2017, from Vanity Fair, http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/05/new-york-times-leadership-succession
Leonardt, D., Galinsky, J., Rudorenn, J., Lacey, M.,
Giratikanon, T., & Evans, T. (2017, January 17). Journalism that stands apart.
Retrieved February 11, 2017, from https://www.nytimes.com/projects/2020-report/
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