The future of the Times: Better than you think
Filed under: Company News, Media
David Geffen, your services may not be required.
Last month, the billionaire Dreamworks co-founder quietly extended a lifeline to the Sulzberger family, signaling his willingness to buy The New York Times and set it up as a non-profit. It looked like a plausible out for the Sulzbergers, who were thought by some observers to be in real danger of losing control of the paper.
Six years may not sound like much of a reprieve for a paper that's been around since 1851 and owned by the same family since 1896. But this is going to be a pretty important six years. Already, the past six months have seen more experimentation and intellectual ferment in the newspaper business than the decade that came before.
By the end of this year, the Times will probably have shifted from its current all-free, all-ad-supported digital model to a "freemium" model wherein readers are expected to pay for certain types of enhanced content. (The first step looks to be charging for Times access on mobile devices.) It may also have joined forces with Journalism Online, which says it could help a Times-sized paper earn an extra $110 million over two years, or with Attributor, which thinks it can help news organizations extract licensing fees from outside websites that repurpose their content.
And that's just in the remainder of 2009. By 2015, the media environment will have changed in all sorts of unforeseeable ways. Maybe widespread failures of other newspapers will have driven up demand for the Times's reporting. Maybe new ad formats or targeting technologies will have made it possible to charge ad rates for digital content similar to those it now charges for print.
And if not, there's always David Geffen.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
6-30-2009 @ 8:56AM
Mike Rickwald said...
Perhaps if the Times reported unbiased news they would not be in this situation. They offered a free subscription for a limited time, and I refused.
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6-30-2009 @ 9:16AM
Jim said...
Same wthing happenend to me ... they offered me a free subscription for a limited time, and I refused it.
In this age of cut and slash journalism, one would think that newspapers would clean up their act. Detroit personified.
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6-30-2009 @ 11:07AM
John Barrow said...
If you read Paul Krugmans article today on Global Warming skeptics it appears that they now do infomercials disguised as commentary....I wonder how much Al paid for that piece
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6-30-2009 @ 9:40AM
ROB said...
I no longer get the New York Times, the dog is fully house broken .
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6-30-2009 @ 9:47AM
Bill said...
The Times is no longer a 'news' paper. It is a propaganda rag for the pabulum puking pinko Marxist extremists who hate this country and will ultimately destroy it. Their audience continues to shrink as more and more people look elsewhere for at least some objectivity. It is truly amazing that they completely ignore reporting 'news' that doesn't fit into their 'agenda', while 'creating' news to push their extreme leftist agenda. The Times has become a complete joke as a newspaper. It has become the lapdog of the hate America extremists in the democrat party. So sad.
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6-30-2009 @ 9:52AM
Chuck said...
You reap what you sow. The New York sowed biased far far left wing bias. Fortunately, most Americans saw the Times for what it was. As that say the "truth" will always win and will survive! The Times was more interested in its agenda than in presenting the news. The Times will not be missed!!
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6-30-2009 @ 10:08AM
Jadetax said...
O I wish for a paper that is objective reporting and not a propaganda instrument for a power grabbing group.
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6-30-2009 @ 10:08AM
tom price said...
let the pece of garbage sink. its a bias piece of trash newspaper
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6-30-2009 @ 10:27AM
ROLLAND said...
I SMELL BAILOUT..THE FEDERAL PRINTING PRESS ONLY MANUFACTURES TWO THINGS.. PROPAGANDA AND MONEY... BOTH ARE WORTHLESS IN AMERICA AND SOON AROUND THE WORLD. THE DEMOCRATS & OBAMA ARE,,,, DRIVING IT LIKE THEY STOLE IT..
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6-30-2009 @ 10:41AM
bob bruno said...
i hope new owners take over. the once great lady has been hijaked by propaganda sellers who only print the news AND VIEWS they deem are fit to print. they cant seem to find their own editorial page so they spread it all over the paper
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6-30-2009 @ 11:20AM
SidJ said...
Yes the Times has changed, but it still is the best overall source around. Hard to believe all the negatives written about it. I, for one, do resent the way it has sluffed off the surrounding Metro area and concentrated its reportage on New York City and State. Almost driven me to The Star Ledger to get some New Jersey news.
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6-30-2009 @ 11:15AM
mike said...
I agree with the comment from Mike Rickwald. If they were legitimate journalist and not political commentators perhaps more people would actually buy their paper and more companies would be willing to buy ads in their publications. Journalism is supposed to be unbiased not a platform to promote your political ideology. They should go out of business.
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6-30-2009 @ 11:55AM
MEW said...
I too agree with Mike Rickwald. I received an offer for the Times and rejected it - though it would have been at the top of my list for housetraining paper for our dogs if they weren't already housebroken. So sad - this once great paper is just another leftest rag - poor writers, poor writing - and opinions that reflect the ideas of the dumbest of the dumb - oh, sorry, Maddow and Olberman. Let this woeful excuse for journalism just die.
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6-30-2009 @ 11:55AM
tom said...
let the commies fold
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6-30-2009 @ 11:55AM
joylondon said...
The absolutely finest paper ever printed!! I would so miss it if it ever disappeared.
I am not a pinko communist liberal jew nor am I a New Yorker.
Good investigative journalism is just that. Most liberals think the Times is too conservative!!
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6-30-2009 @ 11:55AM
chris10280 said...
The Times remains the greatest newspaper in the world. They can be exasperating at "times" and they make mistakes (oh horrors - none of its readers ever make mistakes) - but as long as the times remains a thorn in the sides of neocon jerks (like many of those offering their lame comments below), and as long as their reporting is as thorough, genuine and professional as it usually is - it will have a place in our society and certainly a place in my life.
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6-30-2009 @ 12:00PM
Linda said...
How can you be a NON-PROFIT when you spew LIES - Obama lies ??
I'll be Obama is taking money from the unsupervised Federal Reserve and handing it out to the NY Times and all of his other big-money and big-media propagandist supporters.
What do you think his "Stimulus" bill did? And what do you think his Cap & Trade Bill is all about - PAY-OFFS - typical Chicago Mafia activities.
Obama, Pelosi and Reid are STEALING our tax dollars to gain political power.
"The Little Guy" they claim to represent is screwed !!
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6-30-2009 @ 12:24PM
wizzer2 said...
The New York Times would follow Obama off a cliff just to smell his farts.
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6-30-2009 @ 2:29PM
elizabetta said...
The times financial crisis has nothing to do with what they print and everything to do with an industry wide technology shift. It no lkonger makes any kind of sense to printon newsprint and ship a product that can be summoned with a finget touch online. Print is very rapidly becoming obsolete.
It is a media dinosaur, the onloy question is which news orgs will make the transition in savvy fashion fast enough to survive.
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6-30-2009 @ 2:07PM
dave said...
I have NO hope for the provda times! Its obvious they have no interest in reporting the news without an extremely left liberal bias, so it good riddance. And its to bad, they once were the best newspaper on the planet, now they reduced themselves to a left wing government mouth piece for the democratic party. What kind of idiot wants to waste money or time on that kinda reporting. They don't want to even try to go back to reporting the news straight, even if it kills them. Pretty stupid people over there !
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