For the record, my original comment never mentioned the NYT. I said, "large news/opinion organizations, especially those who started in print and are trying to maintain their business models, have become irrelevant." donohoe responded with an article in the NYT that caused the NY governor to take action on something. At best, that illustrates that they wrote a good article. It does nothing to provide an answer to my original comment. So yes, I argued one thing, and he argued something totally different so that he wouldn't have to answer the tougher question.
> That people are not currently willing to pay for it doesn't mean that it's irrelevant, just that the correct business model has not yet been found.
Just like the MPAA and RIAA a decade ago, they have been fighting market pressure rather than taking the hint and changing their business models. They want to keep the same profits they received from their captive audiences of yesterday, and they don't understand that people don't need to pay historical rates for the vast majority of the information they offer.
If the NYT fits that description, then I would love to see a reason why my conclusion doesn't apply to them. They certainly aren't relevant because of their name alone, are they? So I would truly like to know what percentage of their content comes from the real NYT reporters in the field, versus internet research, AP feeds, rehashes of yesterday's news, etc.
Joe Q. Public certainly doesn't miss out when he avoids paywalls. He typically gets better (and faster) information through his RSS feed than he ever has by reading the NYT directly. They might offer a unique opinion, or an extra line from an interview, but it's rarely vital information. He's not going to pay monthly for the privilege of reading an article written by a 'distinguished journalist' when it's really all about the information, not the prose. So what does that leave? Exclusive photos? Infographics? Op-ed?
I really don't mean to imply that journalists who go into dangerous situations aren't worth being paid. They certainly are doing important work. But to imply that the ones employed by one news corporation are any better than the others is just silly. They are all witnessing the same event from different angles, and I now have the ability to see the situation from the eyes of ALL of them through multiple sites (often within hours), not just the one who graces my newspaper's front page every morning.
So in the end, they have built a business on being a person's sole channel for world news, but the average person has many many many more channels available today. If they don't change their business model (indeed, their entire way of thinking about news), they will become unnecessary, extraneous, pointless... irrelevant.