Controversial money-making plans include cruise to Europe with editors and reporters, and multi-tiered pay options
A New York Times-sponsored cruise to Europe with editors and reporters is one of the controversial money-making ideas being cooked up by chief executive Mark Thompson's new regime, according to a recent interview with the former BBC director general in the New York magazine.
Thompson is likely to meet much resistance to the idea among journalists who treat the divide between editorial and business as sacrosanct, but other ideas on developing revenue streams are worth noting in an industry struggling to secure its commercial future.
In the interview Thompson talks about the "engagement curve" of the NYT's estimated 50 million readers, ranging from the full paid-up subscribers at the high-margin end to the long tail of casual website users who may click on a single link.
Inventing ways of persuading readers up and down the chart to pay, especially those in the middle who might respond to lower priced products, is the big challenge, said Thompson. "By far the most important, in my mind, at the moment is what I hope is going to be the growing suite of paid products."
For instance, the paper recently launched a mobile subscription that lasted just four weeks, aimed at an audience that doesn't want the entire paper or full access online.
Thompson is also looking at another pay option for those that just want part of the paper and may be willing to pay a reduced price for a digital only offering of select news and features.
Another package the paper is exploring is being called the "need to know" tier which would include some of the best writing from the previous week, as well as multimedia packages such as the acclaimed Snow Fall, an elegant extravaganza that chronicled avalanches in the Cascades mountain range.
Such was the impact of the feature, executive editor Jill Abramson told a conference in New York recently, that "snow fall" had become a verb in the newsroom. "Everyone wants to snow-fall now, every day, all desks," she said.
Expanding on the idea for a "need to know" package, Abramson told staff in a memo obtained by Capital New York that it would be an "immersive digital magazine experience", which many believe will be aimed at the mobile and tablet user.
"We're going to thicken the plot with things like video, with new form factors, new devices," Thompson told the New York magazine. "But the point of the exercise is not the means but the sense of the relationship."
Thompson is also trying to imbue the paper with, what he calls, a new "skills mix". In place of the 30 reporters and editors who left in the last year, the New York Times is hiring video staff that will work to a general manager who Thompson recruited from the Huffington Post, Rebecca Howard.
The former BBC director general's efforts to reshape the business are causing rifts on the paper, says the New York magazine, and he has been blamed for the loss of Nate Silver, the star statistician, columnist and author who brought his politics blog to the paper three years ago and recently quit for ESPN and ABC.
Silver recently told The Week that while he loved the NYT news team, he thought its management was too "constrained" and "conservative" with the company's budget to make bold moves. Citing Jeff Bezos' purchase of the Washington Post, Silver told the website Grantland that the news industry, like any business, had to invest in itself or face a slow death.
"He's someone who understands how to reinvest in a product," he said of Bezos, "and the notion that, 'well you spend a dollar on an investment today … because you expect them to return $1.20 tomorrow.'" Reported by guardian.co.uk 5 hours ago.
A New York Times-sponsored cruise to Europe with editors and reporters is one of the controversial money-making ideas being cooked up by chief executive Mark Thompson's new regime, according to a recent interview with the former BBC director general in the New York magazine.
Thompson is likely to meet much resistance to the idea among journalists who treat the divide between editorial and business as sacrosanct, but other ideas on developing revenue streams are worth noting in an industry struggling to secure its commercial future.
In the interview Thompson talks about the "engagement curve" of the NYT's estimated 50 million readers, ranging from the full paid-up subscribers at the high-margin end to the long tail of casual website users who may click on a single link.
Inventing ways of persuading readers up and down the chart to pay, especially those in the middle who might respond to lower priced products, is the big challenge, said Thompson. "By far the most important, in my mind, at the moment is what I hope is going to be the growing suite of paid products."
For instance, the paper recently launched a mobile subscription that lasted just four weeks, aimed at an audience that doesn't want the entire paper or full access online.
Thompson is also looking at another pay option for those that just want part of the paper and may be willing to pay a reduced price for a digital only offering of select news and features.
Another package the paper is exploring is being called the "need to know" tier which would include some of the best writing from the previous week, as well as multimedia packages such as the acclaimed Snow Fall, an elegant extravaganza that chronicled avalanches in the Cascades mountain range.
Such was the impact of the feature, executive editor Jill Abramson told a conference in New York recently, that "snow fall" had become a verb in the newsroom. "Everyone wants to snow-fall now, every day, all desks," she said.
Expanding on the idea for a "need to know" package, Abramson told staff in a memo obtained by Capital New York that it would be an "immersive digital magazine experience", which many believe will be aimed at the mobile and tablet user.
"We're going to thicken the plot with things like video, with new form factors, new devices," Thompson told the New York magazine. "But the point of the exercise is not the means but the sense of the relationship."
Thompson is also trying to imbue the paper with, what he calls, a new "skills mix". In place of the 30 reporters and editors who left in the last year, the New York Times is hiring video staff that will work to a general manager who Thompson recruited from the Huffington Post, Rebecca Howard.
The former BBC director general's efforts to reshape the business are causing rifts on the paper, says the New York magazine, and he has been blamed for the loss of Nate Silver, the star statistician, columnist and author who brought his politics blog to the paper three years ago and recently quit for ESPN and ABC.
Silver recently told The Week that while he loved the NYT news team, he thought its management was too "constrained" and "conservative" with the company's budget to make bold moves. Citing Jeff Bezos' purchase of the Washington Post, Silver told the website Grantland that the news industry, like any business, had to invest in itself or face a slow death.
"He's someone who understands how to reinvest in a product," he said of Bezos, "and the notion that, 'well you spend a dollar on an investment today … because you expect them to return $1.20 tomorrow.'" Reported by guardian.co.uk 5 hours ago.