NYT's media correspondent tells us all we need to know about what's wrong with newspapers

I think this speaks for itself. I mean, really, this is like GM backing SUVs and being surprised when Toyota and Renault do better.

Filling media gaps, watchdogs spring up online
By Richard Pérez-Peña
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
SAN DIEGO: Over the last two years, some of this city's darkest secrets have been dragged into the light - city officials with conflicts of interest and hidden pay raises, affordable housing that was not affordable, misleading crime statistics.
Investigations ensued. The chiefs of two redevelopment agencies were forced out. One of them faces criminal charges. Yet the main revelations came not from any of San Diego's television and radio stations or its big newspaper, The Union-Tribune, but from a handful of young journalists at a nonprofit Web site run out of a converted military base far from the downtown - a site that did not exist four years ago.
As newspapers in the United States - and much of the western world - shrink and shed staff, and broadcast news outlets sink in the ratings, a new kind of Web-based news operation has arisen in several cities, taking up some of the slack and forcing the mainstream media to follow the stories they uncover.
Here, it is VoiceofSanDiego.org, offering a brand of serious, original reporting by professional journalists - the province of the mainstream media, but without the expensive paper and ink. Since it began in 2005, similar operations have cropped up in New Haven, Connecticut; the Twin Cities in Minnesota; Seattle; St. Louis, Missouri; and Chicago. More are on the way.
Their news coverage and hard-digging investigative reporting stand out in an Internet landscape long dominated by partisan commentary, gossip, vitriol and citizen journalism posted by unpaid amateurs.
The fledgling movement has reached a critical mass, its founders think, to form a planned association, angling for national advertising and foundation grants that they could not compete for by themselves. And hardly a week goes by without a call from frustrated journalists around the country seeking advice about starting their own online news outlets.
"Voice is doing really significant work, driving the agenda on redevelopment and some other areas, putting local politicians and businesses on the hot seat," said Dean Nelson, journalism director at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. "I have them come into my classes, and I introduce them as, 'This is the future of journalism."'
That is a subject of hot debate among people who follow the besieged newspaper industry. Publishing online means operating at half the cost of a comparable printed paper, but online advertising is nowhere near robust enough to sustain a newsroom.
And so, financially, VoiceofSanDiego and its peers mimic public broadcasting, not newspapers. They are nonprofit corporations supported by foundations, wealthy donors, audience contributions and a little advertising.
New nonprofits without a specific geographic focus also have sprung up to fill other niches, like ProPublica, devoted to investigative journalism, and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, which looks into problems abroad. A similar group, the Center for Investigative Reporting, dates back decades.
But experts question whether a large part of the news business can survive on what is essentially charity, and whether it is wise to lean too heavily on the whims of a few moneyed benefactors.
"These are some of the big questions about the future of the business," said Robert Giles, curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. Nonprofit news online "has to be explored and experimented with, but it has to overcome the hurdle of proving it can support a big news staff. Even the most well-funded of these sites are a far cry in resources from a city newspaper."
The people who run the local news sites see themselves as one future among many. They have a complex relationship with the mainstream media, whose failings have created an opening for new sources of news, and whose cutbacks have created a surplus of unemployed journalists for them to hire.
"No one here welcomes the decline of newspapers," said Andrew Donohue, one of two executive editors at VoiceofSanDiego. "We can't be the main news source for this city, not for the foreseeable future. We only have 11 people."
Those people are almost all young, some of them refugees from the mainstream media. The executive editors - Donohue, 30, and Scott Lewis, 32 - each had a few years of experience at small papers before abandoning newsprint. So far, their audience is tiny, about 18,000 monthly unique visitors, according to Quantcast, a media measurement service. The biggest of the new nonprofit news sites, MinnPost in the Twin Cities and the St. Louis Beacon, can top 200,000 visitors in a month, but even that is a fraction of the Internet readership for the local newspapers.
VoiceofSanDiego's site looks much like any newspaper's, frequently updated with breaking news and organized around broad topics: government and politics, housing, economics, the environment, schools and science. It has few graphics, but plenty of photography and, through a partnership with a local TV station, some video.
But it is thin - strictly local, selective in coverage and without the wire service articles that plump up most sites.
On a budget of less than $800,000 this year - almost $200,000 more than last year - everyone does double duty. Lewis writes a political column, and Donohue works on investigative articles. But the operation is growing, and Woolley, president and chief executive officer, said he is convinced the nonprofit model has the best chance of survival.
"Information is now a public service as much as it's a commodity," he said. "It should be thought of the same way as education, health care. It's one of the things you need to operate a civil society, and the market isn't doing it very well."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/18/business/voice.php

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"Books about cosmopolitan urbanites discovering the joys of country life are two a penny, but this one is worth a second glance. Walthew's vivid description of the moral stress induced by his job as a high-flying executive with the International Herald Tribune newspaper is worth the cover price alone…. Highly recommended." The Oxford Times

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A PLACE IN MY COUNTRY
by
Ian Walthew


'I read A Place in My Country with absolute unalloyed delight. A glorious book.'
Jeremy Irons (actor)

‘Ian Walthew was a newspaper executive with a career that took him round the world, who one day did a mad thing. He saw a for-sale sign on a cottage in the Cotswolds, bought it, resigned and moved in. For the first few weeks he just lay on the grass in a daze. Then he started talking to his neighbours and digging into the rich history of this beautiful part of England. Out of his inquiries grew this affecting and inspiring memoir.What sets it apart from others of its ilk is the author’s enviable immunity to cliché and his determination to love his homeland better than he used to. His elegiac account of relearning how to be an Englishman should be required reading for anyone who claims to know or love this country.’ Financial Times


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A PLACE IN MY COUNTRY
By
Ian Walthew


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Business trip to the IHT in Paris or friends and family coming to visit you? Fed up with hotels? Bring the family (sleeps 6) to superb Montmartre apartment - weekend nights free of charge if minimum of 3 work nights booked;. Cable TV; wifi, free phone calls in France (landlines); large DVD and book library; kids toys, books, travel cot and beds; two double bedrooms; all mod cons; half an hour to Neuilly and 12 mins walk from Eurostar. T&E valid invoices.

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Things aren't looking too good are they? Are we in fact on the brink?

I just completed my own narrative of Friday, 31st October 2008 and there are things that worry me a great deal more than the future of newspapers.

But on the media side, things aren't looking too good are they?

An ex-executive editor of the International Herald Tribune told me this week that he had something called a BQ (for blog quotient) and that it was pretty full. He reads HuffPost, RealClearPolitics, the Daily Beast, and one private one.

I noted he didn't read Porfolio, if we can call it a blog, which I suppose we can if we can call HuffPost one; below is some info on the dodgy future of Portfolio.

What interested me most is that the blogs this ex-IHT boss mentioned aren't really blogs (like this one) but simply non-MSM on the Internet. He might not be reading a lot (and I don't know what his MSM quotient is) but he's reading it. A MSM guy to the core and he's not in his 20s.

If we take the advertising forecasts for '09, let alone '10 which no one is daring to even speak of I note, and we add in these sea change reading habits, I just can't see how the NYT/IHT are going to get by without some really smart thinking and some pretty smart thinking right now.

In today's IHT, the op-ed page, for the first time used the term 'Afghanistan on the Brink'.

Well, if you've been reading your IHT carefully this year, it's a wonder to you probably why it's taken until the beginning of November for such op-ed pieces to appear under such a headline.

I feel much the same way about the NYT/IHT strategy. We are at an 'on the brink' moment for the future of two newspapers that I and many readers of this blog love.

What I don't see is an acknowledgement of that. But I'm well on the outside, so don't give that idea too much weight. Who knows what their smart Ivys and MBAers in R&D and Strat Plan have up their sleeves?

However, sitting there in their huge (and massively expensive and bottom-line useless/mistake) H.Q building in Manhattan, with a million circulation, being the number one newspaper site and just immersed in the incredible self-belief of American, sorry, NYT, exceptionalism, it's not difficult to see how that headline might not appear in your head: "NYT on the brink".

But I'm pretty sure that's exactly where it is.

Ironically, NYT Company stock, having dipped below the '$10-for-me-on-the-brink-price', ended the month exactly, to the cent, there: it closed out Friday at $10. A 22% drop in the last three months.

New York Times Co
(NYT:NYQ) NYT on other Exchanges
10.00 USD Last
+0.07 +0.70% Change
Data as of October 31, 2008 16:03 exchange time.

I'm going to take a break from Think! next week, elections being one reason, my wife being in Australia and me looking after my two boys being another.

I'll be back. I think.

Condé Nast cuts profile of 2 magazines
By Richard Pérez-Peña
Friday, October 31, 2008
Condé Nast Publications will make deep staff cuts at two magazines, Portfolio and Men's Vogue, and publish them less often while cutting budgets across the company by 5 percent, company executives said Thursday.
Men's Vogue will all but disappear as a separate operation. It will be folded into Vogue and will be published twice a year instead of 10 times, the company said. Employees said they were told Thursday that most of the magazine's staff would be laid off.
The business magazine Portfolio will be published 10 times a year instead of 12. Employees said they were told Thursday that most of Portfolio's Web site staff would be dismissed and that much of the content unique to the site would be dropped.
The company's official position was that it had not yet determined where it would cut Portfolio, or how deeply, but executives who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to go into detail said they expected that 15 to 20 percent of the magazine's jobs would be eliminated. Some of the cuts will involve Portfolio's online operations, including advertising sales, which will be folded into those of Wired magazine.
The cuts at Condé Nast demonstrate that the belt-tightening at American magazines has reached even those that rely on luxury product advertising — a segment of the industry that has held up better than most.
"We still like the magazines," said David Carey, a group president at Condé Nast who directs several magazines, including Portfolio. "What we don't like is the revenue trend across all sectors of the business."
Through the first nine months of the year, ad pages in all U.S. magazines were down 9.5 percent from the same period in 2007. Most magazines produced by Condé Nast — including Vogue, GQ, Architectural Digest and Wired — have had much smaller declines, but they are also among the most expensive magazines to produce.
Portfolio, started last year amid much fanfare, is Condé Nast's first business magazine and its most expensive new project in years. Executives said the company was willing to lose more than $100 million on it.
It had an average circulation of 415,000 in the first half of the year and 445 ad pages through nine months — good figures for a new magazine but still far short of profitability. It hired a staff of prominent editors and reporters at high salaries but has been roiled by internal disputes and high turnover. Men's Vogue, started in 2006, has circulation of almost 370,000 and 449 ad pages through nine months.
Condé Nast executives said spending had been under budget, with several positions unfilled, which would limit the effect of the 5 percent budget cut.
Aside from Men's Vogue and Portfolio, they said, staff cuts would mostly be achieved by attrition, though they said there would be some layoffs.

READ AN ALTERNATIVE IHT DAILY NARRATIVE AT
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LOOKING FOR A CHRISTMAS BOOK GIFT TO BUY?
"Books about cosmopolitan urbanites discovering the joys of country life are two a penny, but this one is worth a second glance. Walthew's vivid description of the moral stress induced by his job as a high-flying executive with the International Herald Tribune newspaper is worth the cover price alone…. Highly recommended." The Oxford Times

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For more reviews visit ianwalthew.com

Business trip to the IHT in Paris or friends and family coming to visit you? Fed up with hotels? Bring the family (sleeps 6) to superb Montmartre apartment - weekend nights free of charge if minimum of 3 work nights booked;. Cable TV; wifi, free phone calls in France (landlines); large DVD and book library; kids toys, books, travel cot and beds; two double bedrooms; all mod cons; half an hour to Neuilly and 12 mins walk from Eurostar. T&E valid invoices.
10% Discount for NYT employees; 15% Discount for IHT Employees



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IHT
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Slaughtering the Cash Cows a Bit Too Early (Content Bridges)

Content Bridges
Content Bridges connects the rough edges of old and newer media, linking new revenue lines and the democratizing value of digital content

October 27, 2008
Slaughtering the Cash Cows a Bit Too Early
New Post: Christian Science Monitor Flipping the Switch

For an industry already on a ventilator, today's FAS-FAX numbers just steal more breath.
The double-digit declines -- the Atlanta Journal Constitution at 13.6% daily, the Dallas Morning News at 9.2% daily and the critical-listed Newark Star-Ledger down 10.4% daily -- shouldn't be a surprise, but they are surprising in their magnitude.
Recall that newspaper CEOs have been saying for a couple of years now that circ declines should plateau soon, as they've pruned out-state and other costlier, and less-attractive-to-advertiser circulation. The story they've told themselves, and us, is that the print business was stabilizing.
In fact, the circulation decline is going the other way -- deepening. Down 4.6% daily and 4.8% Sunday, these are new lows and a trend further downward from the largely 2.5-3.5% declines we've seen over the last four years.
Let's connect the dots.
One big reason the numbers are declining is the product itself. In the last year, we've seen unprecedented cuts in the product -- and the customers are noticing. It looks like the amount of newsprint is down about 10-15%; some in stories, some in ads. Trusted bylines have disappeared overnight. Readers notice, and talk to their friends, and they're saying: it's not the newspaper it used to be. When the subscription notices come, they're a little less likely to be acted upon.
In a sense, newspapers have been slaughtering the cash cows -- print revenues still drive more than 85% of the business -- a bit too fast. No doubt, what we're talking about big picture is the transition of the business from print to digital. What today's numbers show is that the movement is accelerating, an acceleration caused both by larger forces (younger readers preferring online, the new green revolution) and by publishers' own cost-cutting. The continuing crunch issue in that: readers online are still worth no more than a dime compared to the dollar in print. So while slashing print costs is a necessity, it is robbing print revenue at the same time. It's an ungainly process, and once started is hard to manage. In fact, it could be like a runaway train, which once dispatched, takes on a velocity of its own. If you're the CEO of such a company, you may feel more like you're a passenger along for the ride, than the engineer in control.
Today's numbers, of course, predate the financial meltdown and now all-bit-official recession. Consumers are shell-shocked, reeling from paper losses on real estate and retirement accounts and fearful of job loss or reduction. We've seen ad spend forecasts decline almost weekly, and we can guess that the next FAS-FAX will be hurt further by these consumer fears.
Otherwise, the data shows a mostly familiar story:
National papers are doing better than metros. The Wall Street Journal and USAToday are both flat, the New York Times down 3.5%. We've seen this trend, more or less, for four years now.
Community dailies are doing better than metros. Check out the Jen and Fitz list. It's heavy on these dailies that have both better community connection and less commoditized content. Same trend as last four years as well.
Yes, overall audience, now measured by industry's Scarborough combined report, is growing. However, flagging online growth numbers -- largely because of the reliance on classified bundling -- show that taking advantage of this new combined audience is an early-stage, slow-moving, work-in-progress.
New blood does not equal turnaround. Despite Brian Tierney's spirited, take-it-to-the community campaign in Philly, the Inquirer's down another 11% daily. In Minneapolis, on-the-brink Avista suffered another 4% daily decline. Tribune, with its raft of changes (though most of the redesigns occurred at the end of the reporting period), took losses, including 7.75% at the Chicago Tribune.
Sunday's as hard hit as daily. The big ad day was down another 5%. That will translate into still less of a mass market, and less print revenue in 2009.
Well, maybe we can blame a little-bitty part of today's announced swoon on broadcasters. Newspaper people have long liked to joke how their morning papers served as both tip sheets and often actual reportage for broadcasters. Rip 'n read. Now ABC News is adding injury to insult, cancelling all print subs. So to whatever extent ABC staff (and local broadcasters) are using newspapers these days, they'll take the content -- for free -- off the web, like apparently almost everyone else. The memo:
As of December 1, we will cancel all subscriptions (newspaper and magazine) for executives and production employees and move them to on-line. This change will have the added benefit of helping the environment. If there are particular circumstances where you believe this will materially impair your ability to get your work done, you should make your case to your executive producer or supervisor by November 15th.

Ken Doctor of Content Bridges

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LOOKING FOR A CHRISTMAS BOOK GIFT TO BUY?
"Books about cosmopolitan urbanites discovering the joys of country life are two a penny, but this one is worth a second glance. Walthew's vivid description of the moral stress induced by his job as a high-flying executive with the International Herald Tribune newspaper is worth the cover price alone…. Highly recommended." The Oxford Times

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Vacation /Business Trip Furnished Rental Apartment in Paris

Disintermediated News and A Place in the Auvergne

One of the things I think news sites should do more of is to disintermediate the news.

Help readers find source material, and without any reporting, parsing, abbreviating etc. by journalists, let the readers at the raw material. There's no reason why this can't be done in print either (at a minimum links within news, news analysis and opinion pieces). I've posted on Link Journalism but this term is shorthand for external links, when internal links are just as important.

I get my best handle on the two American presidential candidates various policy positions and a sense of them as candidates, not by reading numerous commentaries and news reports about their speeches, but by simply reading their speeches. It takes time to find them, and it's a lot easier if someone has already done it. Which is why I appreciate posts like these on to these today on http://www.iht.com/.

Text: McCain's speech
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
The following is the text of a speech given by Senator John McCain on the American economy in Virginia Beach on Monday as provided by the McCain campaign

Text: Obama's speech
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
The following is the text of a speech given by Senator Barack Obama on his economic policy in Toledo, Ohio, on Monday as prepared for delivery and provided by the Obama campaign.

By way of contrast there is no link provided to even one of Palin's speeches, despite this article today:

POLITICAL MEMO
Palin's speeches electrify, but her zeal poses risks



I mention my Auvergne blog, because it would be interesting to find blogs that:
(a) don't make any comment on the news - which mine nearly qualifies for however it does make the odd observation very rarely; typically A Place in the Auvergne just re-organizes IHT content in a way I can understand and follow world events more clearly - story telling basically beyond a simple aggregator, article selection obviously playing a role but leaving space for the reader to draw their own conclusions;
(b) don't even use any journalism reports at all, but just went to source material itself. In the case of politics, the two speeches quoted below are an example; in the case of a WHO or UNHCR report, simply their text alone on any given subject and the text (press releases for example) of governments, organisations etc taking a contrarian view to their reports.

The above examples are something http://www.iht.com/ does do, occasionally, and the newspaper extremely rarely (and even then, extracts and selected passages).

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International Herald Tribune
IHT
New York Times
NYT

Vacation /Business Trip Furnished Apartment in Paris

A closer look at those NYT blogs

I won't tell a lie and say that what follows is the result of a month long quantitative and qualitative survey and study of NYT's blogs - it isn't.

It's a snap shot of their blogs, taken at around 20.00 hrs CET Paris time on Sunday 12 October, 2008, the kind of time when people in Europe or in Manhattan before lunch might be taking a look at the web.

First off, the logos - I have to get this off my chest.

The design is what the Australians would call 'daggy' (a dag being a piece of shit stuck to the matted wollen rear end of a sheep). I get T magazine which is about as good as NYT design gets so I know they are capable of better, but the following reprentative example is an absolute embarrassment. If MSM wants to know why it can't connect with younger audiences, take a look at these bad boys.

Secondly, you can generally judge the health of a blog by the quality not just of its postings but also the quality and quantity of its comments. If people like your blog, they track it. If you don't get a comment in about 1 hour of a post you're not really in the game. Meislin says most (non-NYT) blogs don't moderate comments - true, but there are millions and millions of blogs so what does 'most' mean in this case. Absolutely nothing. All the ones I like and follow moderate, and have good quality comments.

Assuming comments are moderated in a timely manner - and if not, there again the NYT is missing the entire point of the immediacy of the blogosphere, then I'd say things are not looking too good for NYT blogs - single digit comments, or none at all, are frequent.

As to the postings these range from simple re-hashes of other NYT material or links to it, or (does Mr. Keller know this?!!) riffing off non-MSM i.e Internet sites and blogs. The shame of it when it's done the other way round!

I'd say only a couple of these blogs past muster and I guarantee you I can find you 10 blogs for each of the subjects covered (with the exception of the NYT's public editor whose last post was about a week ago and got just 4 comments) that have heaps more traffic, better content and a lot more reader interactivity.

So, what exactly is the NYT.com doing here apart from being able to say it has 'blogs' for which it does not even have a particular editorial policy.

In short: a mess. If Rich has got traffic data that proves me wrong, then I'm all ears.

I leave you to examine the below, explore further and draw your own conclusions.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/tanglewood-contemporary-festival-applause-beyond-the-polite/#comment-56007

July 24, 2008, 10:51 am
Tanglewood Contemporary Festival: Applause Beyond the Polite
10 comments

http://baghdadbureau.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 12, 2008, 7:35 am — Updated: 8:57 am

Dark Humor
By Qassem H.J.

No comments

http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 12, 2008, 3:54 am
Mike Timlin’s Long Day
By Jack Curry

1 comment

http://bitten.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 10, 2008, 10:23 am — Updated: 10:23 am
Recipe of the Day: Free-Form Apple or Pear Tart

4 comments

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 10, 2008, 3:55 pm — Updated: 11:39 pm
‘R.I.P. Good Times,’ Sequoia Capital Warns
By Claire Cain Miller

5 comments

http://carpetbagger.blogs.nytimes.com/

February 28, 2008, 10:31 am
The Baggage Carousel Stops

20 comments

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/

The Sunday Word: A Race So Close and So Tense
By Kate Phillips and Michael Falcone

15 comments

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 12, 2008, 2:00 pm — Updated: 6:45 pm
A Phantom Bell Atlantic Phone Booth
By David W. Dunlap

No comments

http://blogs.iht.com/tribtalk/business/globalization/

October 10, 2008, 5:48am
The bottom, by any other name

10 comments

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/11/morgans-tight-bind-with-mitsubishi/#more-27256

Morgan Stanley’s Tight Bind With Mitsubishi

October 11, 2008, 9:21 pm

6 comments

http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 10, 2008, 1:12 pm — Updated: 1:35 pm -->
Ferran Adrià on Creativity
By The New York Times

4 comments

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 10, 2008, 11:35 am — Updated: 12:08 pm -->
Green Inc. Roundup
By Andrew C. Revkin

19 comments

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 11, 2008, 9:00 am — Updated: 12:46 am -->
Which Generation Has It Worst?
By Catherine Rampell

13 comments

http://executivesuite.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 10, 2008, 7:03 pm — Updated: 12:20 am -->
The Worst Week Ever for the Dow

By Joe Nocera

12 comments

http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 12, 2008, 12:47 pm
Live Updates, Week 6 of the N.F.L.
By Paul Myerberg

1 comment

http://gambit.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 11, 2008, 2:40 pm
Svidler Leads Russian Championship
By Dylan Loeb McClain

No comment

http://goal.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 11, 2008, 9:36 pm
Player Ratings: U.S. vs. Cuba

4 comments

http://blogs.iht.com/tribtalk/travel/globespotters/index.php/

October 10, 2008 5:26pm
Art Galore in London

No comment

http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 10, 2008, 1:52 pm — Updated: 7:40 am -->
Cheap Green: Laundry Time

50 comments

http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 12, 2008, 9:44 am — Updated: 9:44 am -->
God Is Watching; So Are Church Consultants

No comments

http://laughlines.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 12, 2008, 9:02 am
Video »
The Dogs of Warrior

No comments

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 10, 2008, 9:04 pm
Starting a Lede, and Finishing It
By Mike Nizza

No comments

http://themedium.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 10, 2008, 10:28 am
In This Week’s Magazine: Produce Yourself
By Virginia Heffernan

2 comments

http://themoment.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 10th, 2008 3:22 PM
The Digital Ramble Mountaineering
By Rosecrans Baldwin

No comments

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 10, 2008, 2:04 pm — Updated: 2:04 pm -->
The Parenting Vote
By Lisa Belkin

16 comments

http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 9, 2008, 8:52 am — Updated: 8:52 am -->
Reading the Family Narrative…Backwards
By Jane Gross

10 comments

http://norris.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 12, 2008, 3:26 am — Updated: 11:22 am -->
Got Any Capital Gains Left?

8 comments

http://runway.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 10, 2008, 8:05 pm
Ground Alert
By Cathy Horyn

16 comments

http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/?8dpc

October 11, 2008, 5:39 pm — Updated: 5:42 pm -->
Book Review Podcast
By The New York Times

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 9, 2008, 12:57 pm
‘High-Performance Eyewear’? Guess Again

91 comments

No comments

http://thepour.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 10, 2008, 5:03 pm — Updated: 5:03 pm -->
“Put a Cork in It,” French Government Says

3 comments

http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 3, 2008, 5:29 pm — Updated: 5:15 pm -->
Article Comparison: Obama/Biden Vs. McCain/Palin
By Clark Hoyt

4 comments

http://thequad.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 12, 2008, 1:14 am
Who’s No. 1? (The Sequel)
By Pete Thamel

8 comments

http://readingroom.blogs.nytimes.com/

May 13, 2008, 5:34 pm — Updated: 5:34 pm -->
Lighting Out for the Territories
By Gregory Cowles

10 comments

http://realestateqa.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 10, 2008, 12:47 pm
Who Should Pay for a New Door Lock?
By Jay Romano

No comments

http://shiftingcareers.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 9, 2008, 9:46 pm — Updated: 9:46 pm -->
After Losing Jobs, More Workers Sue
By Marci Alboher

No comments

http://slapshot.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 12, 2008, 1:41 pm
Can the N.H.L. Deal With Captain Goalie?
By Jeff Hale

No comments

http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 10, 2008, 5:01 pm — Updated: 5:01 pm -->
The Drug Czar’s Report Card: F
By John Tierney

14 comments

http://timestraveler.blogs.nytimes.com/

October 12, 2008, 12:01 am — Updated: 4:54 pm -->
Monday, Oct. 12, 1908
By William S. Niederkorn

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Blogging at the New York Times: Rich gives us the word

I recently posted on New York Times blogs and indeed their own list of recommended blogs, which was, shall we say, a little Manhattan/L.A focused, somewhat behind the curve and without much (anything) for 'the foreigners' (the new term I like to use for us IHT readers).

I wrote to Rich Meislin at the NYT and am grateful for his comprehensive reply, which I received today.

I don't think it reveals a new view of the blogosphere that many members thereof would agree with and largely, if I can parse Rich, it reveals that at least at http://www.nytimes.com/, many (but by no means all) of its blogs are simply used as another platform for breaking news more quickly.

I have to say that I am also surprised - very - that there is no official NYT editorial policy on NYT blogs regarding the purpose of them.

The editor of the NYT has accused bloggers of 'riffing off MSM' so he must therefore believe that blogs are different to MSM, in which case the blogs on http://www.nytimes.com/ must presumably be different - in some way - to the MSM content of the NYT.

Anyway, enough of me - over to Mr. Meislin:

Hi, Ian, and thanks for the note.
The first thing I must do is apologize for the Blogs 101 list, which is embarrassingly in need of a refresh. It's been at least a year since there was a serious update, and it's on my to-do list for after the U.S. election. (Your thought about international blogs is an interesting one and I'll take it into account.)
Like the original Navigator page (http://nytimes.com/navigator), the Blogs 101 list was originally created several years back for internal use in the Times newsroom, to get our staff more familiar with what was then the relatively young and quickly growing Web form of blogs.
Since then, we've nurtured quite a large number of our own, as you can see on our blogs directory page, http://nytimes.com/blogs. While there's no official New York Times editorial policy on the purpose of them, they tend to fall into a couple of categories.
Some of our blogs, like The Caucus, DealBook and City Room, are places where we post breaking news multiple times a day, generally in shorter form than you would expect from a fully developed New York Times article. These allow us to stay on top of developing news, in addition to getting instant reaction (and sometimes supplemental information and tips) from our readers. We have sports blogs for readers who can never get enough, some of which have offered play-by-play coverage of various events.
Other blogs allow our readers to get more of their favorite subjects or writers than we could possibly fit into the pages of the printed New York Times (which still forms the backbone of what we publish online each day). And they give our writers an opportunity to get closer to their readers, which is often useful for both.
So fans of the New York restaurant scene or of wine (or in particular fans of Frank Bruni and Eric Asimov) can enjoy more of them as they explore additional subjects on Diner's Journal and The Pour. Brian Stelter, who made a name following the networks and cable on his TVNewser blog, now does that for us on TV Decoder. During the Hollywood awards season, we offer Carpetbagger (one of our very first blogs) with David Carr to provide detail and commentary, including video.
Tara Parker Pope has been getting enormous readership for her health blog, Well, which has fascinating takes on a subject that affects everyone. Jane Gross's new blog, The New Old Age, has quickly developed a following among those who are caring for aging parents (and some of the aging parents themselves); it was an area that we felt wasn't being explored on blogs elsewhere in as useful a way as we could do it. Andrew Revkin has made Dot Earth the home of a dedicated community of people trying to consider the limits of and answers to global growth, and Green Inc. is looking at similar subjects from the business perspective. David Leonhardt and Catherine Rampell didn't know there was going to be a global financial meltdown when they started Economix recently, but it's good that it's there for the extra insights it provides.
As for the ethical boundaries for blogs, it's simple: they're the same as for The Times on paper. The tone of blog posts may be more casual, and the editing process is quicker, but the effort to maintain high levels of accuracy and fairness is the same. (That each blog post is looked at by an editor and that comments are scanned to avoid offensive or off-topic posts is a rarity among blogs.)
Doing blogs well takes a lot of time -- generally more time than our authors and editors of them initially expect. So in deciding whether to do a blog, we also have to consider what we can sacrifice from the authors' previous duties and where we can find the people to edit them and moderate comments. That's not easy, particularly when resources are tight. But when we get the right author and the right subject and enough time, the results can be pretty great for our readers.
Best, Rich Meislin


A word about Rich Meislin:

Rich Meislin is the technology editor of The New York Times, directing the reporters who cover technology news for all parts of the newspaper.
He served from March 1998 to January 2001 as editor in chief of New York Times Digital, where he oversaw the editorial staffs that produce The Times on the Web, New York Today, and other electronic offerings from The Times.
Before joining the electronic world, Meislin was senior editor for information and technology at The Times, responsible for the introduction and support of computers and other technology used by reporters, editors, photographers, artists and page designers in the production of newspaper. He was one of the earliest advocates for the newspaper's presence in the online world.
Meislin has been at The Times for more than 25 years, starting as a copyboy and a computer programmer for the New York Times/CBS News Poll. He served as a political reporter and bureau chief in Albany, N.Y., and as a foreign correspondent in Central America and the Caribbean before becoming bureau chief in Mexico City. Among the stories he covered were the war in El Salvador and the battle between Argentina and Britain over the Falklands, as well as the Mexico City earthquake.
He subsequently became the newspaper's Graphics Editor, a post he held for six years.
Computers and computer-aided communication have long been one of Meislin's interests. He learned programming as a teenager, working with punch cards on an IBM 1620 at his high school in Allentown, Pa., and could once program in seven computer languages, several of them now obsolete. Meislin has been online for well over a decade, starting with accounts on CompuServe and People Link in the mid-1980's, and still spends way too much time on the Net.
Rich Meislin at navigate AT nytimes.com welcomes your comments and suggestions.
Source: http://partners.nytimes.com/library/cyber/meislinbio.html?scp=1&sq=Rich%20Meislin&st=cse

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Portfolio's Jack Flack to NYTimes.com

Meanwhile, over in Internet land last Monday, Fishbowl reports a big name leaves to go to a dead tree company, albeit their website (what's the difference if the paper is paying for the megabytes).

(While we're on the subject of nytimes.com still no word from Rich.)

Paul Pendergrass, a.k.a. PR blogger "Jack Flack" is leaving his post at Portfolio.com to join the New York Times Dealbook blog. We're told his first item will be an open letter to Hank Paulson--not exactly new ground for him, though things are moving so quickly his post on September 19th seems in need of an update already.
He may also have an article in the Dealbook print supplement tomorrow as well. We're not clear yet on if this will be the letter to Paulson, or a different piece.
Pendergrass occupies rare territory in PR--one who both practices corporate PR, and blogs about the business under the banner of a mainstream media outlet, rather than on an agency's site.
According to a Q&A with PRWeek a year ago, longtime experience with Coca-Cola, followed by time at the helm of his own consultancy has sharpened his gimlet eye. Our source tells there was no ill will with Portfolio or Conde Nast, merely that his contract ran out.

http://www.mediabistro.com:80/prnewser/media_people/portfolios_jack_flack_to_nytimescom_96660.asp

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Does internet advertising piss people off?

If the future is digital, the answer to the above question- why, when and how - would good to know.

I mention this because, as anyone who runs a blog will know, there's a marketing technique which is to search blogs and then create automatically generated comments on a particular posting to do with the blog subject. Google of course offer this to their bloggers, but freelancers are at it to.

For example, when I posted on Internet Advertising a while back I received an auto-generated comment, which, like most of them, I didn't post at the time as comments on Think! are moderated.

(Which is also why I didn't post a completely embarrassing comment from someone who said that the IHT's old KNIHT! campaign was crap because "what it portrayed was: "Think backward." Not exactly what you want to tell your readers, is it?" I really hope this person doesn't work in advertising or marketing for the IHT, if they genuinely believe this, because clearly they know nothing about advertising. This type of analysis of advertising is what I call 'advertising autism' and a surprising number of people who work in the business suffer from it. To get it, you had to THINK! Get it? Clearly not an IHT target reader if that's the take out for this person. But I digress.)

Anyway, back to these automated blog comments. A posting I made (Gap Widens in Online Advertising from the WSJ) threw up this automated comment:

"Hi. I like your blog. Internet Advertising have become a common practice these days. This kind of business costs money and nerves for the customers and brings huge profits to the marketers. They are everywhere – on TV, radio, in the Internet as well as the press. You can hear lots of complaints from the customers. They are also numerous on the Net, especially on this great site www.pissedconsumer.com."

So, I checked out www.pissedconsumer.com - by which I mean I had a run through the homepage and went and made a coffee and did some gardening - but as I gardened this thought did strike me:

I'm pissed off by these automated comments on my blog (a form of internet advertising), I'm pissed off - frequently - by internet advertising and windows and all that crap, but I've never been pissed off by a good old fashioned display advert in print. Even an advertising supplement, I simply turn the pages, even the fashion ads in the IHT I just run past without even looking at them. I only register adverts in areas that interest me. This cannot be said of internet advertising which is frequently intrusive, disruptive and yeah, I'm a pissed consumer.

Personally, I think this internet advertising model/format as currently cooked-up is over blown, very Internet 1.0 and isn't going to survive as we now know it.

On that note, I'm off to help build a friend's roof.

P.S Please don't send annoying comments about how advertising that pisses me off works because I made this post with this company's logo. Get it?

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Email from Rich Meislin at the NYT (automated response)

If you do write to Rich Meislin at the nytimes.com with your blog recommendations, this is what you can expect.


EMAIL
From: navigator@nytimes.com
Date: 05 October 2008 10:18
To: Ian
Subject: Your recent mail

Thanks for writing to The CyberTimes Navigator. Because of the volume of mail received, I cannot acknowledge submissions individually, but I do read all of them and make changes in the list accordingly.
I appreciate your interest.
Sincerely,
Rich Meislin


I am expecting a reply (and naturally a change in the list to include all my blogs, notably this one at a minimum), because we IHT readers are important, are we not, to the global ambitions of the NYT?

(There's a blog whose sole purpose is to be critical of the NYT - not the purpose of this blog - but they should perhaps, in the interests of balance, be listed too?)

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Email to Rich Meislin

EMAIL
From: Ian
Date: 05 October 2008 10:18
To: navigator@nytimes.com
Subject: Message for Rich Meislin re. IHT and Blogs

Rich hi,

Could I invite you to take a look at http://ihtreaders.blogspot.com/2008/10/what-exactly-are-nyt-blogs.html and read to the end and some previous posts on NYT/IHT blogs. There are a number of questions and ideas.

Many thanks,
Ian

http://www.ihtreaders.blogspot.com/
www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com
www.farmblogs.blogspot.com

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What exactly are NYT blogs?

If you're looking for answers about the purpose and ethical boundaries of NYT blogs, you can't find them at the NYT.com Blogs 101
which is maintained by Rich Meislin and where you are invited to send along your favorite blogs.

Mine is A Place in the Auvergne so I'll do that and see that happens.

Actually Think! can be found on http://www.iht.com/ if you look REALLY carefully but I think once the higher-ups spot this, it may be removed.

(To find it, go to the home page, scroll down to the very bottom, and there you will see next to a search box, on the last line, this:

More:
Daily Article Index

Hyper Sudoku

IHT Developer Blog

In Our Pages

Click on IHT Developer Blog (not updated since July which is about when the iht.com crowd knew for sure their days were numbered, so sadly it hasn't been updated since - a pity because I'd love to hear the Last Post from www.iht.com) and you will arrive on a page with some links.

These links are:

BBC Backstage
Google Maps API Blog
jQuery Blog
NY Times "Open"
THINK!
Wordpress Blog

Anyway, back to Rich: question - what is the purpose of NYTs blogs as you see it or is there some 'official' NYT editorial policy statement on this you could share with us? What are the rules, what is going on?

The only thing I can find at Blogs 101 is the NYT giving a small talk about blogging and then some recommendations. Recommendations not referenced elsewhere, I don't believe, on http://www.nytimes.com/ unlike the new WP political site, which includes content from, and links to, blogs.

But recommendations nonetheless.

Quite interesting to see an 'official list' of MSM approved blogs.

It's not a bad 101 listing, but shouldn't the NYT be offering a bit more of a blogging 2.0 listing if it wants to be ahead of the news curve and have a bit more street cred in the blogosphere? (That's another question for you Rich.)

OK, the winners are:

Blogs 101
By RICH MEISLIN
To get the feel of Web logs and blogging, visit some of these sites. Most blogs carry links to other blogs on related topics or that the author likes (known as a blogroll). This page is under development; feel free to suggest your own finds. Business and sports are being built, and suggestions are particularly welcome.
Recent additions: Footnoted.org reads corporate filings and news releases more closely than most people. . . . Terry Teachout's About Last Night covers culture in New York and elsewhere. Interesting blogroll of culture sites, too. . . . Cyberjournalist.net looks at the effects of the Internet and new technology on the media. . . . Paidcontent.org looks at the economics of the Web. . . . ScotusBlog and the related Supreme Court Nomination Blog are keeping a close watch on the proceedings in the court. . . . Crooks and Liars and politics, with a liberal slant. With a great collection of video clips. . . .

Collections & Rankings
Technorati blog search and the Technorati Top 100 list of most linked-to blogs
Feedster Search for news feeds and blogs by topic
Bloglines (Registration required.) Find blogs by topic (or name) and read them here
Blogpulse, from Intelliseek, lets you search blogs and automatically finds trends
Truth Laid Bear Traffic Rankings Most-visited blogs
Flickr Not quite blogging, but fascinating. Storytelling through photo sharing.

General
BoingBoing "A directory of wonderful things" from around the Internet
Gawker Gossip and snarkiness about media, showbiz, New York City, etc.
Defamer Similar in tone to Gawker, but with a West Coast slant

Technology & Media
Romenesko The blog all journalists know
Media Bistro Sort of a blog. Its Fishbowl is more of a blog.
John Battelle's Searchblog Media, technology, Internet search, etc.
Dan Gillmor's blog Well-regarded former columnist for San Jose Mercury, now on Bayosphere
Cyberjournalist.net Jonathan Dube for the Online News Assocation
BuzzMachine Jeff Jarvis talks a lot about new media (and himself).
PressThink Jay Rosen of N.Y.U. on The Media vs. the press
SimonWaldman.net Newspapers and new media from a British perspective
Scripting News Dave Winer tracks the world of blogging and technology and has some interesting (and some cranky) thoughts.
TheJasonCalacanisWeblog Blog about blogs from the chairman of Weblogs Inc.
Paidcontent.org Looks at the economics of the Web
Journal-isms Richard Prince, of the Maynard Institute, pays attention to diversity issues in journalism.
Media Law Robert J. Ambrogi

Technology, Toys & Cool Things
Gizmodo From the Gawker empire
Engadget Gadgets of all sorts
Josh Rubin: Cool Hunting "Stuff from the intersection of design, culture and technology"
Cool Tools Kevin Kelly finds all manner of intriguing things.
Josh Spear "The pulse of cool."
Treehugger Environmental design and consciousness

Politics & Government
Daily Kos Markos Moulitsas Zuniga. One of the best-known liberal blogs.
Talking Points Memo Joshua Micah Marshall. Widely read liberal blog from a contributor to Washington Monthly and The Hill.
MyDD Jerome Armstrong and Chris Bowers.
Eschaton Atrios, aka Duncan Black. "Proud member of the reality-based community."
AmericaBlog John Aravosis. Politics from the left; one of the key sources of info in the Gannon/Guckert affair.
Crooks and Liars and politics, with a liberal slant. And a great collection of video clips.
Daily Dish Andrew Sullivan on conservative, religious and gay issues. (He tried to stop but couldn't.)
InstaPundit Glenn Reynolds. One of the best-known conservative blogs.
Kausfiles Mickey Kaus's mostly political blog on Slate
Little Green Footballs
Power Line One of the more widely read blogs from the right.
Iraqi Bloggers Central Good collection of links to Iraqi bloggers.
Mystery Pollster Mark Blumenthal's intelligent analysis of polls and polling.
Wonkette Washington gossip (also from the Gawker empire).
Global Voices gathers some interesting views from blogs around the world.
ScotusBlog and the related Supreme Court Nomination Blog are keeping a close watch on the proceedings in the court.

Also see Traditional Media, below

'Traditional Media'
Altercation. Eric Alterman. MSNBC.
Howard Fineman MSNBC
Bloggermann Keith Olbermann. MSNBC.
Citizen Journalists MSNBC's experiment in participatory journalism
LOOSE wire Jeremy Wagstaff, Dow Jones
The Corner From National Review
Hit and Run From Reason
Editor's Blog John Robinson, Greensboro, N.C., News Record. The paper is conducting a widely-commented-on experiment in increasing communication with its readers.

Other News-Record blogs can be reached from this page.
The Politicker Ben Smith, New York Observer
Tapped from the American Prospect
CJRDaily Updates from the Columbia Journalism Review (successor to its Campaign Desk)
The Huffington Post Arianna Huffington's celebrity blogfest
Blinq Daniel Rubin, a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, blogs for its Web site
Blogspotting from Stephen Baker and Heather Green of Business Week. (You can find other Business Week blogs from there.)

Business
Seeking Alpha and The Internet Stock Blog News and analysis by David Jackson, a money manager and former tech stock analyst
Footnoted.org reads corporate filings and news releases more carefully than most people
New York
Curbed Everyone's favorite New York City topic: real estate
Gothamist
About Last Night Terry Teachout writes about culture in New York and elsewhere. Interesting blogroll of culture sites, too.
NYC Bloggers Thousands of other New York City bloggers, organized by subway line
Food
The Food Section Josh Friedland. With a New York slant.
Gothamist Food From the Gothamist folks
Saute Wednesday Bruce Cole.
Chocolate and Zucchini Clotilde writes about food from Paris.
A Full Belly Alaina Browne.

Design
Apartment Therapy Maxwell and Oliver Ryan. Tips and things for living better in small spaces
Core77 Industrial design
Design*Sponge A little breathless, but some interesting finds.
Land and Living
MocoLoco Modern design from all over
Reluct.com Design and architecture from a team in the Netherlands.
Treehugger Design with an environmental slant
Miscellany
PostSecret People mail their secrets -- touching, funny, scary -- on homemade postcards.


Another question for Rich: if we're (IHT readers) all going to be reading www.nytimes.com and not iht.com, where is the list of important blogs outside of the U.S.A.? It is rumoured by the recent Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2007 report that some actually exist. Us IHT readers might well be interested in your recommendations.

Can I throw in the idea of something to do with Food and Agriculture for example: one I like is - full disclosure: it's mine - Farm Blogs from Around the World.

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