Newspapers Have to Adapt or Die
New York Times Faces Realities of Web Age
While Times reporters previously worked toward deadlines for stories that would appear in the next morning’s paper, now they are constantly on deadline in an age of the Web, blogs and Twitter, Times reporters and editors said during a panel discussion March 11 in Mountain View, California.
“There are just more things to do with the same number of people. There’s a deluge of news,” said Damon Darlin, a technology news editor in the Times’ San Francisco bureau. He, along with reporters Claire Cain Miller and Brad Stone, discussed their work at a meeting of the Public Relations Society of America, Silicon Valley Chapter, at Microsoft’s campus in Mountain View.
24-hour Deadlines
When the Internet first emerged in the mid-1990s, newspapers like the Times broke news stories in their print editions and only afterwards would post them online, Darlin explained. “Our goal was to protect the paper … but we don’t play that game anymore.”
Now stories go online as soon as they are completed and reporters and editors also are under pressure to write blogs and even provide Twitter updates on breaking news because of the competitive pressure to get the news out.
The Web is where most of its audience is today, Darlin noted. The Times has about 1 million subscribers to its print edition, but averages 24 million visitors per month to its Web site, www.nytimes.com.
Reporters Adapt to New Media
One can look at this evolution in news gathering in two ways, said Stone. “We are practicing journalism in new ways, but at the same time we’re trying to bring the New York Times style of reporting to new media.”
The Times “style” Stone refers to is the practice of reporting in-depth, substantiating information and talking to many sources to produce a balanced and credible report. Twittering, sending quick, brief messages of no more than 140 characters from a computer or mobile device is the antithesis of that. “Twitter is real-time, impulsive thought,” Stone noted.
There is a “herd mentality” to Twitter or other Web-based news, he added, and while the Times has to be a part of that, it also needs to offer its perspective on the news. “We need to step back and tell readers more in-depth, significant stories.”
Although Twitter and other Web demands keep Times reporters busy, Twitter can be a source of story ideas, added Miller. She keeps track of the top five most-Twittered subjects as a gauge of what issues are most important to readers and follows up on some of them.
Newspapers in Economic Crisis
The Times faces a dilemma faced by other newspapers of figuring out how to gain revenue from its online content. Most newspapers charge nothing for online and many are losing print circulation and advertising revenue. While they sell ads online, that doesn’t make up for the revenue lost in print.
This financial crisis in publishing is causing some papers to drastically cut costs, switch to online publication only or go out of business altogether.
“We’re constantly trying to figure out how to get people to pay for what we do,” said Darlin.
One option for changing the business model for newspapers calls for imposing “micropayments” of a dime, a quarter or a dollar for each story on which readers click. The fee would need to be small enough to be painless but if millions click on a story, the paper wins ... and survives.
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