NYT's Sulzberger: 'We can't care' if newspapers die
DANA POINT, Calif.--Could the Information Age's fast-paced news overload be a boon to the old-media companies that it was supposedly going to force out of business?
That was one of the suggestions brought forth by Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman and publisher of The New York Times Company, at his keynote address at the WebbyConnect conference here Wednesday morning.
"Our 21st-century news cycle, with its trials and tribulations, feels even more immediate because of our access," he said. "It is reasonable to ask: Do we need all this news and information? Do we want all this news and information? Can we tolerate all this news and information?"
In an age characterized by both extreme uncertainty and a glut of outlets to hear about it, Sulzberger said people will turn to trusted and pragmatic voices.
"Now that everyone is in their end-of-the-world mode, we should make a conscious effort to reject the increasingly frenzied 'apocalypse now, tomorrow, and forever' talk," he said. "Quality content matters...trustworthy voices are more important than they have ever been."
As Sulzberger addressed the small, exclusive crowd of media industry and digital-strategies types at a luxury hotel just down the road from the upper-crust towns that inspired The O.C. and Laguna Beach, the setting wasn't a perfect fit for his sobering message of adapting and keeping focused in hard times.
Neither was some of Sulzberger's underlying optimism about the Times' own future. The New York Times Company's stock has been trending downward for years now, its quarterly earnings haven't been sunny for quite some time, it underwent newsroom layoffs earlier this year, and no one's denying that many of the ad dollars once enjoyed by a few national news outlets are well on their way to distribution across a vast array of new-media publications.
Sulzberger would brand this not as a crisis, but rather as change that requires adaptation. "It's important for traditional companies to adopt strategies that enable us to be of the Internet, not on the Internet," he said. "There must be an institutional commitment to engage in reinvention, especially as the information revolution picks up steam."
That's why, he said, the Times has undergone some digital initiatives unusual for the print media business. It launched bookmarking and sharing service TimesPeople earlier this year. Soon, it will launch TimesExtra, which integrates acquisition Blogrunner onto the publication's home page to provide related links from across the Web. And it has also announced an API for developers to work with one of its most popular online features, the "Most Emailed" list.
The publisher also spoke about the Times' decision to stop requiring a paid subscription to access some of its online content, including its archives and op-ed columnists. Sulzberger said the subscription service, called TimesSelect, was a good idea in 2004 but not a good idea a few years later, and that the company's choice to get rid of it was a sign of its willingness to evolve--even though TimesSelect brought in $10 million in revenue annually.
"In those three years, the Internet changed so dramatically, and we had to adapt to those changes," he said. "Online news and information became unambiguously commoditized. Search became a titanic influence, as we all know today."
Since axing TimesSelect, Sulzberger said growth of the Times' Web site accelerated.
He acknowledged that the "evolution" pursued by the Times could mean that it will become less reliant on its venerable print edition. WebbyConnect organizer David-Michel Davies asked Sulzberger if the newspaper will even exist in 10 years.
"The heart of the answer must be (that) we can't care," Sulzberger responded, though he added that the radio, the television, and even the telegraph were all supposed to kill print reporting. "We do care. I care very much. But we must be where people want us for our information. It's the thought of cannibalizing yourself before somebody else cannibalizes you."
Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline. 
Are you kidding me? Journalism does not live at the NYT. It is purely about their opinion. I want to know what is happening, I just want the truth.
Neither of the first two are as portable, or as quiet as a paper. Radios fade out after a few dozen miles. Portable televisions are even worse. Telegraphs were (by necessity) too short and (back then, relatively) too expensive to contain much information.
Nowadays, with a smartphone and decent network coverage, I can read stories in a car, plane, or train for up to literally hundreds of miles, or at least long enough to quickly download the web page and read it at leisure, even saving it for later if I want. With radios and televisions, the content is ephemeral. With the Web, you can keep it forever, and re-read it as often as you like... just like a newspaper. I can fit literally thousands of newspapers into my pocket with a decent smartphone, and still have room for music, games, and etc.
I'm thinking that the web may indeed supplant the newspaper - at least once a critical mass of humanity is comfortable enough with the idea, and has universal-enough access to the means of getting online. Taht said, it'll be kind of sad to see print editions fade off - the newspaper has been a tradition of sorts, for better or worse, for almost as long as the printing press has existed.
Hey Sulzberger, not only do we not care if the NYT dies, we will celeberate the death of the super evil New York Times, with the biggest party ever.
The New York Times, is the headquarters of the The Obama campaign propaganda department .
The New York Times deserves to die.
A so-called "newspaper" that is nothing but the propaganda, disinformation, and dirty tricks department of the Democratic Party, has no business being in business.
Not to mention, the New York Times has been the defacto Intelligence Department of Al Quaeda, by constantly publishing on their front pages no less, classified national security secrets on how America is fighting Al Quaeda, leaked to them by Bush-hating CIA operatives, in an insane and illegal attempt to bring down the Republican goverment.
Its, no surprise the NYT's revenues, profits, circulation, and stock price have continued to fall, as conservatives and patriotic Americans boycott the New York Times aka The Slimes, in droves.
The NYT's ultimate collapse can only be good for America.
Apart from yourself, Michael Moore, the election fraud vermin at ACORN, Joseph Stalin, and of course your comrades in loony left stupidity at Daily Kos.
New York Times Q3 earnings slide 64 percent (Liberal Media DeathWatch)
Overall revenue down, advertising revenue down, profits down, circulation down.
http://boston.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2008/10/20/daily38.html?ana=yfcpc
It also looks like the next generation of news consumers are increasingly more lazy and don't want to take the time to read, maybe they should offer some sort of news related online video outlet like cnn.com or newsy.com
- by LWCO June 12, 2009 12:31 PM PDT
- I am writing you from inside Pakistan. The people of Pakistan and the USA need to be friends. We are part of your world family. Pakistanis strongly admire almost everything we know about the USA including your problems. If only we could have such problems.
- Reply to this comment
-
(17 Comments)My name is Aneel. I am 24 and my fiancé, Pawan, lives six hours away near the Swat Valley where there is all this conflict today. We are both the directors of a network of small schools with thousands of students run by young women and mothers. They learn literacy and skills. Women that were trapped in their homes out of fear make us all proud when they read poetry to their husbands and become teachers.
These women are making beautiful hand embroidered flowers on patches to sell and pay for their tuition. It would be a great collaboration to send these patches to people in the USA who need work and could make something practical, like shopping bags, out of them as a sort of home business. We could help each other and share the profit. Please take a look at our website www.lwco.org and if you see some possibilities, then join hands with us, your family far away