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New York Times Running On Fumes

alleyinsider.com

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Re: New York Times Running On Fumes

#3

Post by quasimojo »

all the newspapers are going to face this crunch...the only way out:

1. sell everything sellable

2. stop printing papers. you are going to go online-only at some point. now the issue is pressed: go online-only or you're dead. don't worry about old people you piss off by stopping their morning paper. if you keep printing newspapers, you're dead in three years or less.

3. paradoxically, don't invest in tech-garbage like apis and developer tools. no one really cares about these, and indeed they just give people content without monetizing it. no one needs another api at this point. the only technical competencies you need are content management and production. forget trying to be a ycombinator widget play...they're all dead-code-walking anyway

4. strike an ad deal with an established online ad player like google or yahoo. close your own ad system/sales, you can't compete with the big players.

5. hire more writers. this is why people will use your site over joe's blog - quality content. your only job now is to make online content that is the best in the world.

do this or something like this and survival may happen...otherwise toodles

Re: New York Times Running On Fumes

#4

Post by randrews »

I wonder how much their situation would improve by opening up their archive for free and removing the registration stuff? They'd get vastly more page views, and thus more ad revenue.

For that matter, if they do go down, what happens to the archive? I hope that something like Wikimedia or the Internet Archive gets access to it, so all that information isn't lost forever.

Re: New York Times Running On Fumes

#6

Post by Alex3917 »

Serves them right for covering up the illegal wiretapping story to help Bush win reelection. The sooner they are out of business the better. I personally prefer to get my news from sources that don't conspire with the government to promote genocide and the erosion of civil liberties.

Re: New York Times Running On Fumes

#8

Post by timr »

randrews wrote: post #4

I wonder how much their situation would improve by opening up their archive for free and removing the registration stuff? They'd get vastly more page views, and thus more ad revenue. For that matter, if they do go down, what happens to the archive? I hope that something like Wikimedia or the Internet Archive gets access to it, so all that information isn't lost forever.

They'd probably die just as quickly.

The problem is likely twofold:

1) Print is expensive. 2) Internet ads don't pay like print ads used to pay.

Okay, threefold:

3) Craigslist has killed the classifieds market dead.

Newspapers around the world are suffering from these things. It's just acutely sad that the paper of record is no better off than the rest....

Re: New York Times Running On Fumes

#9

Post by netcan »

randrews wrote: post #4

I wonder how much their situation would improve by opening up their archive for free and removing the registration stuff? They'd get vastly more page views, and thus more ad revenue. For that matter, if they do go down, what happens to the archive? I hope that something like Wikimedia or the Internet Archive gets access to it, so all that information isn't lost forever.

I would call that admitting defeat to an extent.

As it stands, pageview content ads don't generate enough revenue to run a paper using a print newspaper inspired business model.

They have experience with that via About.com. How much better could the NYT do then About?

Not saying they definitely shouldn't do it, but definitely not for the ads. If they could get archives-to-print conversion without cannibalising any other businesses that rely on owning content, maybe they could break even on lost subscriptions. Maybe not.

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