Sulzberger to Address New York Times’ Staff

February 14th, 2007 by Sebastien Provencher

Journalism Fan just sent me a note to le me know Arthur Sulzberger is going to address his staff today to discuss the comments he made to Ha’aretz last week. I found more details on the New York Observer’s web site.

Here is in essence what Sulzberger is going to be talking about:

“We are continuing to invest in our newspapers, for we believe that they will be around for a very long time. This point of view is not about nostalgia or a love of newsprint. Instead, it is rooted in fundamental business realities: Our powerful and trusted print brands continue to draw educated and affluent audiences.

“Traditional print newspaper audiences are still significantly larger than their Web counterparts. Print continues to command high levels of reader engagement. And, of course, we still make most of our money from print advertising and circulation revenue. And yes, I remember what I said here last year and what I was supposed to have said last month at Davos about not having a printed product in five years time.

“So let me clear the air on this issue. It is my heartfelt view that newspapers will be around–in print–for a long time. But I also believe that we must be prepared for that judgment to be wrong. My five-year timeframe is about being ready to support our news, advertising and other critical operations on digital revenue alone …whenever that time comes.”

The Observer concludes:

It was a gaffe, but also an epiphany. The New York Times is the newspaper of today. As it happens, today is when people read the newspaper. (…) And even as the American newspaper industry is preparing for the day the Internet kills it off, The Times has made itself into the dominant newspaper on the Web. It has gotten there by trial and error—and the trials and the errors are both ongoing—but the basic premise has held: It is the paper, only without paper. (…)

It’s easy, except it’s not. The Washington Post is a soup of cryptic links, bobbing in and out of view. Dailies in cities like Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco are still hidden behind “portals” (please resize your newspaper to fit this window). It’s not that nytimes.com is immune to fads or bad ideas. There are tepid blogs and cornball videos and if-you-insist podcasts strewn around the site. They will likely go away, piece by piece, as the real experts in those media—following The Times’ example—claim their own share of the Web audience. In the meantime, you can ignore them, and read the paper.

What it means: Sulzberger is back-tracking for good reasons. Newspapers (especially the New York Times) are still going to be published in 5 years, the business is still viable (and profitable) and many people still care a lot about the print medium (myself included). But this clearly shows Sulzberger and his exec team are thinking about a digital future where the content is more important than the medium (which is a smart way to think). For more information on the New York Times’ digital strategy, I invite you to read this excellent Business 2.0 interview with Martin Nisenholtz, SVP Digital Operations.

Posted in Arthur Sulzberger, Martin Nisenholtz, New York Times, Newspapers, Strategy, Trends, Washington Post | No Comments »

NY Times Publisher: “I Really Don’t Know Whether We’ll Be Printing The Times In Five Years”

February 8th, 2007 by Sebastien Provencher

Found in today’s Haaretz (via TechMeme) an interview with Arthur Sulzberger, owner, chairman and publisher of the New York Times company. In this interview, he gives readers honest answers to tough questions. Here are the highlights:

  • Given the constant erosion of the printed press, do you see the New York Times still being printed in five years?

“I really don’t know whether we’ll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don’t care, either,” he says. He’s looking at how best to manage the transition from print to Internet. “Internet is a wonderful place to be and we’re leading there,” he adds. The Times has doubled its online readership, and now has 1.1 million subscribing to the print edition - and 1.5 million readers online, each day.

  • Asked if local papers have a future, Sulzberger points out that the New York Times is not a local paper, but rather a national one based in New York that enjoys more readers from outside, than within, the city.
  • Classifieds have long been a major source of income to the press, but the business is moving to the Internet.

Sulzberger agrees, but what papers lose, Web sites gain. Media groups can develop their online advertising business, he explains. Also, because Internet advertising doesn’t involve paper, ink and distribution, companies can earn the same amount of money even if it receives less advertising revenue.

  • The New York Times recently merged its print and online news desks. Did it go smoothly, or were there ruffled feathers? Which team is leading the way today?

“You know what a newspaper’s news desk is like? It’s like the emergency room at a hospital, or an office in the military. Both organizations are very goal-oriented, and both are very hard to change,” Sulzberger says. Once change begins, it happens quickly, so the transition was difficult, he says. “But once the journalists grasped the concept, they flipped and embraced it, and supported the move.”

  • How are you preparing for changes to the paper that are dictated by the Internet?

“We live in the Internet world. We have, for example, five people working in a special development unit whose only job is to initiate and develop things related to the electronic world - Internet, cellular, whatever comes. The average age of readers of the New York Times print edition is 42, Sulzberger says, and that hasn’t changed in 10 years. The average age of readers of its Internet edition is 37, which shows that the group is also managing to recruit young readers for both the printed version and Web site.

  • In the age of bloggers, what is the future of online newspapers and the profession in general?

There are millions of bloggers out there, and if the Times forgets who and what they are, it will lose the war, and rightly so, according to Sulzberger. “We are curators, curators of news. People don’t click onto the New York Times to read blogs. They want reliable news that they can trust,” he says. “We aren’t ignoring what’s happening. We understand that the newspaper is not the focal point of city life as it was 10 years ago. “Once upon a time, people had to read the paper to find out what was going on in theater. Today there are hundreds of forums and sites with that information,” he says. “But the paper can integrate material from bloggers and external writers. We need to be part of that community and to have dialogue with the online world.”

What it means: I think it’s the first time I read an interview with a print media executive that clearly states that their goal is to manage the transition from print to online. I believe it’s a very candid view at what’s happening behind the scenes in the New York Times Company boardroom and possibly at all newspapers around the world. I also like the concept of the New York Times, as a trusted brand, being the curator of news, i.e. an aggregator of trusted news sources (including blogs). Finally, the NY Times chairman seems to embrace the fact that the New York Times is an authoritative international newspaper brand.

Posted in Arthur Sulzberger, Blogs, Business models, Classifieds, Monetization, New York Times, News, Newspapers, Socio-Demographics, Traffic | 1 Comment »