Throw some investment fund cash at Bill Keller and tell him to give it to promising editorial franchises.

Now this is interesting: the NYT has a 'special investment fund'.

Who holds the purse strings to the special investment fund and how can strategic planning and/or the IHT get hold of some of it?

And is specific investment in some promising verticals the same, in affect, as a sort of dismantling of The Grey Lady, especially when you throw in the word 'franchises'?

Special 'Investment Fund' to Increase Business Coverage at The Times?

by John Koblin October 28, 2008

At first, there was good news at New York Times executive editor Bill Keller’s semi-annual State of the Newsroom town hall meeting, the supposed informal name of which has now become official: “Throw Stuff at Bill.”

There would be no job cuts.
But of course, there’s a plenty big trade-off for protecting a staff.
For one, you’ve got to lose your stand-alone Metro and sports sections. It means new projects and some investigative projects are suspended. It also means that you might get “more exotic and garish species of advertisements,” said Mr. Keller.
And: “It will mean, I’m sure, that our hiring is even more selective than before.”
Hiring is already selective to begin with. Yes, The Times has been able to pluck away the likes of Peter Baker from The Washington Post and Jackie Calmes from The Wall Street Journal this year, but even Mr. Keller conceded, “There have been very few of those.”
And they were brought in to cover the election, for which the newspaper anyway gets a quadrennial shot of a special budget-plumping complex.
But cuts aren’t everything, and, as Bill Keller well knows, the remaining question is, what are you doing with what you’ve got? And the answer, it seems: taking care of Business Day.
Why, one questioner asked, was BizDay suddenly increasing in size while everyone else was being told they couldn’t hire?
“The new hiring we’ve done over the past six months to a year, I would say, certainly since the time of the buyouts and the layoffs, has been overwhelmingly for digital,” he said.
He continued: “It’s been money that comes from an investment fund, if you will, that was set up to try and expand some of the business verticals that the company hopes have the potential to make good money down the road.”
Last month, The Times did expand BizDay, at a moment that was timed eerily well (traffic in September, thanks to the financial world going nuts, was up 66 percent versus September 2007). The page added Personal Technology, Small Business, Your Money and Economy sections—the sort of stuff that generates lots and lots of traffic.
And traffic is everything in the executive suites of the Eighth Avenue Times Tower these days.
When those “channels” launched on the business page last month, a press release went out to investors and reporters. The release declared: “First of Many Steps to Enhance Online Business and Technology Coverage.”
In a conference call with investors, a call generally reserved to talk of dividends, debts and risk, CEO Janet Robinson trumpeted the section even more and said more reporters and editors will be hired!
“In the coming months, nytimes.com will expand its Small Business, Personal Technology and Your Money sections, introduce more journalists, deepen coverage in its DealBook franchise and continue to add more tools and multimedia features,” she said in the call.
And indeed the hiring has already begun.
Over the past six months, the paper has hired more than a dozen journalists to work for it, most recently plucking the New York Post’s mergers and acquisitions reporter, Zachery Kouwe, to come work under Andrew Ross Sorkin at DealBook. Other hires have included Ben White from the Financial Times, Vindu Goel, Sam Grobart, Claire Cain Miller and Ashlee Vance.
So—what’s this magical “investment fund,” and where can we get one?
“We’ve gotten money budgeted to invest in business verticals on the Web site this year—economics, green business, small business, expanded technology,” wrote Mr. Keller in an e-mail to Off the Record. “The money has gone to hire a small number of editors, reporters and producers. Most of the vertical expansions are already launched, and some of their work has appeared in the printed page as well.”
As far as where it comes from, he said: “The money is in the digital budget, which (as part of the integration of the newsroom) is merging with the newsroom budget.”
So … that’s the investment fund! So does this mean that digital products that produce traffic results are immune from the budgetary constraints of the rest of the paper? (And are we really asking a different question than Mr. Keller’s questioner asked?)
Not that it doesn’t make sense: In September—no doubt because of the credit crisis—the newly launched Economy section had four million page views in its debut month. But it does seem to indicate that the horse and the cart of print and Web have reached a new kind of accommodation.
“Nothing better validates the priority we have given to our journalists than our coverage of the financial crisis,” he said to staffers. “Because Larry Ingrassia has been building a stronger BizDay staff over the past few years when other newsrooms have been brutally downsizing, we have dominated this story with the best reporting team in journalism. That is not just sloganeering or paternal pride.”
He added: “Day after day, week after week, we have been quicker to the news, smarter and more lucid in explaining it, and better at conveying what it means to ordinary Americans than our competition—and, yes, that includes publications that live primarily to report on business.”

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New York Observer on NYT Q3 Results

Sinking feeling



Times Company Stock Hits 52-Week Low
by John Koblin October 23, 2008

On a morning where The New York Times Company's stock hit its 52-week low at $10.39, Times Company C.E.O. Janet Robinson used the most palatable phrase she could find—"a continuing softness"—to describe the bleak third quarter results to investors today.
In all, the Times Company's net income dropped 51 percent this quarter versus 3Q 2007, revenues were down 8.9 percent, advertisng revenue down 14 percent.
Ms. Robinson said that luxury advertising was one of the things that saved the advertising numbers from being worse (T magazine, thank you very much); in total it made up a total of 13 percent of total advertising revenue.
Lots of jobs have been cut this year for the Times Company—and more are on the way—and up to this point NYT Co. has paid out $56.9 million in severance packages.
Times execs also announced that they are considering cutting the company's dividend, one of the last reliable places for income for Sulzberger-Ochs clan, and for increasingly desperate shareholders. Last year they increased the dividend more than 30 percent; it's also what reserved a $25.1 million pool of cash for the family a year.
Moody's said that if they don't cut the dividend, the Times is perilously close to getting a Junk bond status, which won't be good for anyone.

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Election 2008: Shining a Light on the (Ir)relevance of Print? (Media Bistro)

I ran a post yesterday about the relevance of print as exposed by the news cycle in the U.S elections. Seems I am not alone in my concerns or thinking.

The is a comment from Media Bistro, quoting on Bill Keller in the NYO.

Election 2008: Shining a Light on the (Ir)relevance of Print? (Media Bistro)
The fallout from this election season is being felt in many different corners of our lives: feminism, such as it is, is once again on the front-burner, SNL may actually be relevant again, and the merits of the caucus vs. primary, may no longer qualify as a bonus question on a civics test, so common a topic did it become last spring. But for our purposes it all comes down to, you guessed it, whether print journalism is still relevant in this election cycle. Not so much, Bill Keller tells the NYO.

"The news outlets that aim to be aggressive, serious and impartial — don't dominate the conversation the way we once did, and that's fine, except it means some excellent hard work gets a little muffled."

But is it really fine?

Actually we think so. And since we still turn to the NYT (online) as a main source of news the fact we rarely see it in print has had very little effect on its relevance in our lives. However! The parts of the paper that pack a punch may be what is shifting. We only have a vague memory of the Johnny Apple days (though, one suspects he's the sort of person that might have made the transition to online life rather smoothly), but Keller points out that the Times investigative pieces appear to be losing their staying power:
One of the casualties, I think, is that powerfully reported and written stories, especially investigative and accountability ones, do not land with the impact they once did, they might still turns heads — and thankfully at times change things — but usually they get pushed aside as the new-media machine moves to the next 'thing.'

(Or they get picked up and carried (or fisked) by the blogosphere.)

Keller uses the Times recent Palin article as an example:

"Even a meaty, damning, 3,100-word, three-bylined front-page Sept. 14 Times piece on Sarah Palin's management style doesn't appear to have the same sort of impact on the campaign trail that it might once have."

But, as we all know, size does not matter in these new media lands the way it once did — perhaps the Times investigative team should consider reporting its next piece via Twitter, we bet that would carry.
http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/newspapers/election_2008_shining_a_light_on_the_irrelevance_of_print_94735.asp



What I like about the NYO Observer piece is its similarity to the article in the NYT that I posted yesterday as an illustration of the problem. It's not as is if the NYT and MSM is blind to the problem?



Amid 2008 Campaign Cacophony on the Web, Print Reverts to Hobbesian State

Does print journalism matter in this election?
“It’s obvious, and no crime against humanity, that the world has many, many places to turn for information, misinformation, analysis, rants, etc,” wrote Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, in an e-mail. “We—The Times, The Washington Post, Politico, the news outlets that aim to be aggressive, serious and impartial—don’t dominate the conversation the way we once did, and that’s fine, except it means some excellent hard work gets a little muffled.
“But we do want our work to be noticed,” he wrote, “and I’ve been repeatedly surprised at the rich, important stories that fail to resonate the way they deserve.”
On one level, more people read The Times, albeit in digital form, than ever. The pipeline piece did a brisk business as an e-mail forward. But so did everything else anyone had to say that day about the campaign—whether it was true or false, reported or simply asserted, fact or opinion. In-boxes crammed with New York Times articles and Huffington Post hyperlinks do not advertise their relative value or importance. Everything is equal, everything is a tie and nothing, it seems, is important anymore.
Nobody has felt this more acutely than the Newspapers and Magazines of Record in the United States. The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time: all over the world of “quality” journalism, there is a feeling of decline.
“There can no longer be a Johnny Apple—a single political reporter who can set the agenda as he did when he discovered Jimmy Carter,” said Frank Rich, columnist for The New York Times. “Whether in print or on the Internet or on television.”
“At Politico we often talk about winning the morning, not just winning the day,” said Jim VandeHei, the editor of Politico. “Because the news cycle is no longer 24 hours—it might be 16 hours or even shorter.”
It works well for Politico, but if everyone is readjusting to that breakneck pace, how much real news is left? And who’s there to suss out the real from the junk?
“The story burns more intensely and then it burns out more quickly,” said Jonathan Alter, the Newsweek writer, musing about the life cycle of pieces. “And there’s so much information and so much political coverage that it’s easy for good stories to be lost entirely in that register.”
“Very few of these stories have a long finish,” said Michael Duffy, the nation editor for Time. “The gong dissipates quickly.”
“My instinct is that there is such cacophony of commentary that it does sometimes drown out ideas from good and deeply reported journalism,” said Marcus Brauchli, the executive editor of The Washington Post.
“In the Internet age, the cycle is constant and people don’t really have time to reflect all day on a single story in the newspaper,” he added. “And it’s more difficult to set the agenda for very long.”
Mr. VandeHei agrees.
“One of the casualties, I think, is that powerfully reported and written stories, especially investigative and accountability ones, do not land with the impact they once did,” he said. “They might still turns heads—and thankfully at times change things—but usually they get pushed aside as the new-media machine moves to the next ‘thing.’”
But such are the pressures of trying to produce material all day—even if it’s unclear what’s actually being absorbed from the information that’s being produced.
Mr. Keller, for one, wonders what happened to the big stories The Times reported during the election cycle.
There was a Jo Becker and Don Van Natta investigative piece of Bill Clinton’s relationship with Kazakhstan—barely noticed. There was a piece in the spring by David Kirkpatrick and Jim Rutenberg about John McCain’s relationship with Donald Trump in Arizona—hardly a word.
Even a meaty, damning, 3,100-word, three-bylined front-page Sept. 14 Times piece on Sarah Palin’s management style doesn’t appear to have the same sort of impact on the campaign trail that it might once have, Mr. Keller said.
“And it’s not just us,” said Mr. Keller. “The Washington Post did an impressive review of Cindy McCain’s drug addiction the other day, and I didn’t hear an echo. I could go on, and so could you. This kind of rigorous, intricate reporting is a major contribution to the public debate, and it certainly gets read. (Our Sunday Palin piece is still number one on the most e-mailed list.) But this kind of work doesn’t dominate the discussion the way it might have in elections past.”
That Palin piece, as of Tuesday morning, was still the second most e-mailed story on the Times Web site, and it had more than 1,050 comments.
Doesn’t 1,050 comments mean something? Doesn’t that suggest an even more meaningful impact than in the old days?
“The answer is no,” said Michael Powell, one of the three authors of The Times’ Palin piece. “It doesn’t get picked up the same way.”
That is, it gets picked up, but only by people who seem to refuse to break the tie between the journalism coming from The New York Times, the spin coming from the campaign trail, and the white noise of punditry and Web-ready opinionizing.
Despite its popularity, the Palin piece appears ready for the inevitable lifetime of a print story these days: It’s hot one second, gone and forgotten the next.
“I say this from a cultural point of view, not a political point of view or journalistic point of view—but bubble gum music just fades and leaves no trace,” said Mr. Rich. “We’re in a laboratory right now and we don’t know what’s really landing with voters.”
There is, of course, good old television.
Keith Olbermann isn’t sitting in his office with the morning papers weighing which lead-all from which major paper will drive the news for the night—in a way that, say, Uncle Walter would do before the CBS Evening News. Instead, you might get a nice anecdote from an Adam Nagourney story in The Times, a response from the McCain camp—and then it’s up to you, the viewer, to break the tie! If you can.
“Everybody knows that if it takes more than five seconds to explain the story, it’s not going to make a lot of noise on the campaign trail,” said Matt Taibbi, a columnist for Rolling Stone.
Mr. Keller, for his part, said that television “seems to shy away from complicated stories, and these big stories tend to be complicated.
“The simple-minded silliness of lipstick-on-a-pig filled at least one cable news cycle, but the question of what kind of executive Sarah Palin has been as mayor and governor didn’t lend itself to the bite-sized format of the nightly news or the constant low-grade babble of cable,” he continued.
In addition to the increased competition from blogs and electronic media, major print news outfits are, of course, indulging in all that the modern-day media environment offers: quick items, videocasts, online chats.
And, if you talk to the dinosaurs, it doesn’t help any.
“The big change for all of us is that we’re all multimedia players now and it means that we’re much busier writing and being on TV or Webcasts, and that can often leave less time for reporting,” said Mr. Alter. “That’s the real problem.”
“I think what’s changed mostly is that we are working every day in three or four dimensions—plotting stories for the Web today, the magazine tomorrow and long investigative pieces three or four weeks from now,” said Mr. Duffy, an editor at Time. “Maybe there’s a fourth dimension, too, and folks are blogging stuff every hour.”
“There’s so much content to fill,” said Mr. Taibbi. “People who write for news magazines like Newsweek and Time, in the old days, they’d be writing one feature a week. Now they have to file every single day for Web sites, and do video hits, appear on TV shows, and that’s in addition to writing their features. The same people are doing four and five times as much work and, obviously, they’re not going to have a great deal of depth on any subject.”
“Hobbes talked about the war of all against all,” said Mr. Alter. “Now it’s the punditry of all against all.”
http://www.observer.com/2008/media/amid-2008-campaign-cacophony-web-print-reverts-hobbesian-state?page=0%2C1


My response to all this is nothing more than
a) newspapers are increasingly demonstrating and even admitting to their increasing irrelevance (or rather Newspaper 1.0 is)
b) time to move to Newspaper 2.o


As I've said before: print needs to change.



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Coldplay and Sulzberger: It wasn't a dream

Cheery Arthur Sulzberger Jr. Delivers Address to Times Employees; Sets Opening Slideshow to Coldplay, No One Applauds

by John Koblin September 12, 2008
Yesterday, on Sept. 11, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. held a meeting with Times employees to give the latest report on the State of the Times. There were two meetings, one in the morning and another in the afternoon, and we spoke to three people who attended the afternoon session.
Mr. Sulzberger, who wasn't wearing a wedding ring, began the meeting with a slideshow that was set to the background of Coldplay's "Clocks." The slideshow highlighted all the Pultizers the paper won this year, and the paper's T magazines, its Web stuff. And by time it was over, no one clapped.
Mr. Sulzberger responded with a little smile, and said, "Coldplay."
A few people giggled.
He said that the paper has recently picked up 820,000 subscribers who signed on for two years or more, and The Times has the highest trafficked newspaper Web site.
He said that he does not track any competitor's Web traffic numbers--like USA Today--since The Times has such an enormous lead.
"Considering what's been going on," said our source, "his bravado seemed tone deaf."
He seemed aware of that fact, and said, "Is this the kind of stuff the publisher and chairman is supposed to say? Yes. Do I also believe it? Yes."
A man asked, very directly, why the company doesn't sell its regional newspapers.
It seemed to catch him off guard. "Here, meet my family," he said, by way of distraction. "Take my daughter." There was silence. "Not in that way," he followed up. Awkward laughter.
Other quotes: "Even as The Journal moves away from its core business mission, we are strengthening our operation."
And: "I promise you, with all my heart, that our beloved New York Times will prevail."
He kept driving home the point that the paper has an influential audience, and with brands like the T magazines, they're bringing in even more influential readers.
Someone asked if the paper would eventually turn into a brochure for the Web site. He said no.
He said the moment when digital gains offset print declines is "within sight," but then added a lot of caveats.
Someone asked Mr. Sulzberger a question about The Times' newest investor, Carlos Slim, who just purchased a 6.4 percent stake of the company.
Per our source: "Arthur said something like, 'They made such an investment because they believe in this company. And you know what?' Pause for emphasis. 'They're RIGHT.'"
"The whole thing was camp," the source concluded.
http://www.observer.com/2008/media/cheery-arthur-sulzberger-jr-delivers-address-times-employees-sets-opening-slideshow-coldp

Ouch.

And now for some comments by readers of the NYObserver.

But for the record, I haven't seen, read or heard any evidence that there is anyone more qualified to be the publisher of the NYT, at the NYT, or in the industry, or in the investment community, than Mr. Sulzberger.

That doesn't mean to say I agree with his strategy, it's just that having him as a fair-ground target for the NYT's problems, for that matter the entire newspaper industry's problems, is extremely convenient for a lot of employees, investors, readers and newspaper execs (from other newspapers) and that's not fair or reasonable.

But what is clear is that Newspaper 1.0 isn't working for any newspaper that I know of, so time to come up with Newspaper 2.o.

Now back to those comments....

Esin Emko (not verified) says:
It is sad. He has absolutely no understanding of how to run a business. He is tone deaf to society around him. He's not even a very nice person.
Sad, really sad.September 12, 2008 11:41 AM

Anonymous (not verified) says:
"with brands like the T magazines, they're bringing in even more influential readers."
What "influential reader" would ever spend more than about thirty seconds looking at any of the T magazines, unless it's an advertising executive checking ad placement? Sulzberger prints house organs for the wealthy twit population. Of course, that's what's become of half of the daily paper anyway.September 12, 2008 11:54 AM

Anonymous (not verified) says:
After trying for several months to receive The NYT in Wisconsin, their circualtion department told us they just couldn't deliver their national edition to us,cancelled our order and gave us credit for our prepay. We turned around and order The WSJ. No delivery issues. How can Mr. Sulzberger grow his product without an excellent delivery service in place? September 12, 2008 12:20 PM

Dan (not verified) says:
The Times circulation dept is incompetent and makes me wonder why they even bother to try to deliver a newspaper outside the NYC Metro area. I live in Massachusetts and subscribed to The Times for 25 years. Suddenly, they said they could no longer deliver the Sunday paper to me before 10 a.m. in the morning when it had been arriving hours earlier for years. The same carrier delivers two other Times newspapers -- The Boston Globe and The Worcester Telegram & Gazette -- and those can get delivered earlier. After several calls to Circulation -- and getting several different answers -- I canceled. And guess what? I don't miss it. Not for a minute. And I'm saving $600 a year. September 12, 2008 1:11 PM

Tom Holzel (not verified) says:
The Times reporting on the presidential campaign has become a parody of fairness that even Monty Python could not surpass. For a look at what to expect from the editors in the last two months of the campaign,(which is unfortunately not a joke), take a look at how they rigged the photographs of the two previous presidential hopefuls at: http://www.velocityassociates.net/Bushkerry.shtmlSeptember 12, 2008 4:47 PM

Candice Beetrue (not verified) says:
First Class Rich Kid Doofus.
With any other parents, this guy would be sweeping floors.September 12, 2008 8:07 PM

Anonymous (not verified) says:
Sulzberger choked on the question about the regional newspapers because he has little left to sell. Likely, he wishes he had sold them 2 or 3 years ago, when the company might have received real value for the properties.NYT is aggressively destroying the regionals, sucking all of the profits out of them and leaving only a shell left over for the local community. It arguably won't be but a few years more before all but the largest of the regionals will be gone.In name, there are 15 or so regionals. But with the consolidation of printing, ad production and now news production, most of these properties no longer can stand on their own. As I say, there is little left to sell.September 12, 2008 9:29 PM

Anonymous (not verified) says:
Do the Editors of The Observer screen every message ensuring only the ones which are determined to crucify this guy get through? Where would you direct all that anger if the members of this family, and Mr. Sulzberger specifically, determined you were right, and decided to fold the newspaper, take their inheritances and sit back and criticize like you? Where would this country be with out the New York Times? I for one fear for a country whose citizens prefer the bile fed to us by most other news sources and the idiocy fed us by most of the rest of the magazines on the news stands. Does your vituperative stance extend to the Dick Fulds, Daniel Mudds and Richard Syrons of the world who have lost ALL their shareholders investments and who will all walk away with big bonuses for doing so? Maybe your anger at the people who hang in their with their companies while they are going through apocalyptic change and who toil every day to find and create value out of what they believe in irks you because you know you would not do the same. I don't know, but when I read these comments day after day in the Observer, it makes me wish you would consider closing your doors, taking your severance and leaving the world a better place. We'll see if this gets published.September 12, 2008 9:52 PM

Anonymous (not verified) says:
You are at a newspaper site, so we can only trust that you actually care about the same.There is a huge difference when one is talking about the legacy of The New York Times and when one is discussing Sulzberger Jr.As one who has worked for both Sulzberger Sr. and Sulzberger Jr, I must report that the difference between the two could not be more profound. Under Sr., reporters and editor were expected to park their opinions at the door. As Sr's lead editor, A.M. Rosenthal, once told us: "I don't care what you feel about the situation, just tell us what actually happened." We were expected to have a sociological perspective on the world. Our opinions never were to enter the newsroom. "Save those for the bar," Rosenthal said.Under Jr., opinion is all that matters. The entire world believes that it knows what Jr. "feels" about the world, and the paper appears to follow suit. This approach has undermined the credibility of The Times, and lowered the value of the franchise. The company desperately needs another Rosenthal and another Sulzberger Sr.Worse, Jr. appears to be an inept business person. He is the sort of business person who announces to the world that his company's chief product - one printed on paper - is dead long before he has any product that even would begin to replace the current one. The company has done nothing - nothing at all - to shore up the foundation of the current profitable product as it transitions to a new era.As for the notion that Sulzberger Jr. simply would "fold the newspaper," come on, give us all a break! The Times itself still has great value. No one - not even a rich person - simply would fold it. That would be stupid. Sulzberger Jr. may be many things, but he is not stupid. There are many of us, however, who would welcome the sale of the paper and the exit of the Sulzberger-Ochs family.September 12, 2008 10:51 PM

Bramps (not verified) says:
I am from the Boston area. I haven't read the Boston Globe for 15 years or any other news rag for at least 10. The posts by Anonymous 9/12/08, 9:52 and 10:51 are so true and disheartening.For many years I would enjoy the morning trip into Boston with my coffee and Globe sitting comfortably on the train getting filled in on the news of the day, local, regional, national, and international. All done very well. I felt very priveliged to have the opportunity to read the NY Times. I'm sure there are many people today attempting to do the same thing. The trains are still running, the paper is still printed. The only difference is the Sulzberger Jr. slant on it all. Total and thorough garbage. It is sad, but hopefully will end soon. I can't predict how, but it is so bad, it has to end.Those who still feel they are getting unbiased, accurate coverage from those papers must have different inner workings than I. September 12, 2008 11:40 PM

http://www.observer.com/2008/media/cheery-arthur-sulzberger-jr-delivers-address-times-employees-sets-opening-slideshow-coldp

Nice Job Lads - now get outta the way! : Cost-cutting at the New York Times (NYO)

What do you do with two award winning sections - in this case Sports and Metro.

Don't give them their own section? Exactly.

And all to save a mere $5 - $6 million dollars (these figures are always produced by the business side and should be automatically reduced by 25-50% depending on who told them to you). And if a focus group says its O.K, well fire away. Hell, have 'em come in and run the paper.

It's this type of non-consequential, distracting cost-cutting that in the long run cracks morale, won't add up to a bag of beans nor save any newspaper that hasn't migrated to Newspaper 2.0, which is why I got out of the newspaper business.

I'm not quite sure who this is supposed to impress other than petulant hedge fund investors, but 'it don't impress me'.

For Times 'Gold Medalists,' A Place in the Back Pages
by John Koblin September 9, 2008

On Sept. 10 at 5:30 p.m., The Times will round up the newsroom on the third floor at its Eighth Avenue building to toast the accomplishments of the 32 reporters and editors who covered the Olympics—the majority of them from the sports department. There will be Champagne and egg rolls to reward the “stunning” coverage The Times produced on the Web, and in the newspaper, wrote executive editor Bill Keller in a staff memo. In an earlier staff e-mail, he lauded the staff and subjected the note, “Our Gold Medalists.”
But in these difficult times, journalistic success is not a protection against the inevitable downscaling affecting the newspaper industry. Just five days earlier, Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. informed the staff that starting in October, for four days a week, the sports section would lose its stand-alone section, and would be tucked inside the business section
Similarly, the Metro Section, for six days a week, will be inserted into the A-section, behind the International and National reports.
“The aim, of course, is to save money—and, importantly, to do it without cutting back coverage,” wrote Mr. Keller in a follow-up memo to the announcement by Mr. Sulzberger.
The Metro Section, too, has had a good year—journalistically speaking. In March, Metro editor Joe Sexton’s staff scored the scoop of a lifetime when it broke the story that Eliot Spitzer was caught up in prostitution ring scandal; Spitzer announced his resignation two days after the story broke online.
But since, Metro has been the biggest victim of this very rough year: It lost bodies amid the larger 100 job cuts the paper enacted through buyouts and layoffs; the department was forced to virtually shut down its suburban bureaus in New Jersey, Westchester, and Long Island; and every day other than Sunday, it will now be buried behind the International and National reports.
Coincidence or not, Metro and sports are two sections that have been complimented, time and time again, for their Web coverage; the Metro report for its City Room coverage, and sports, most recently, for its Rings blog during the Olympics.
Multiple sources described Mr. Keller and his masthead colleagues resisting the proposal, which originated in the business side of the paper. But these are tough times—and the elimination of these two section fronts stands to save the newspaper a “significant” amount, according to a source who said that Mr. Sulzberger put the savings at $4 million to $5 million a year.
Like many newspapers, these sorts of display and printing changes allow editors to save the overall amount of space reserved for these stories—and to avoid firing any “Gold Medalists.”
Sources with knowledge of the unfolding situation said sometime in the last month, editors left The Times building on Eighth Avenue and watched through one-way glass as the proposal was put before a focus group of regular readers.
“There was concern about how our readers would react,” said a newsroom source. “There was concern whether we were taking something important away from them. It turned out in the reader interviews that it wasn’t a huge deal for them. They kept saying, ‘But will it be the same content?’”
It will, Mr. Keller has since assured the staff. Or at least, they do “not expect” to lose page numbers, content, or more reporters.
But the industry downturn doesn’t show much sign of letting up, does it?
Other solutions had been proposed, according to sources, including one in which the Metro and sports sections were combined into a single section. (Sort of like a mini-New York Post flopping out of the Times?) But that proposal was not seriously considered for very long.
Mr. Keller wrote in an e-mail to staff that they would strongly consider each section for better A1 placement. A source said that both editors pushed for full-color pages when they’re within other sections, but that there was no guarantee that would happen; according to a newsroom source, neither Metro editor Joe Sexton nor sports editor Tom Jolly was “thrilled with the decision, but they understood.”
“I feel bad for not feeling worse about it,” said Mr. Jolly, the paper’s sports editor, to Off the Record. “We would love to have a section front seven days a week, and we would love to have more space. We are also realistic. We’re confident we can maintain the quality work we’ve been producing in print. All things considered, it could be a lot worse.”
And the way things are looking these days, it still could be.
jkoblin@observer.com
http://www.observer.com:80/2008/media/times-gold-medalists-place-back-pages




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Portfolio, New York Preparing Write-Around Profiles on Arthur Sulzberger Jr. (NYO)

Portfolio, New York Preparing Write-Around Profiles on Arthur Sulzberger Jr.
by John Koblin September 5, 2008

Two magazines are preparing profiles of The New York Times' Arthur Sulzberger, Jr.
New York magazine has assigned Joe Hagan to write a profile, and David Margolick is preparing a piece for Portfolio. Both articles are write-arounds, and neither author has scored an on-the-record interview with Mr. Sulzberger, according to a source familiar with the situation, who also says that Mr. Sulzberger has no plans to talk to either of the writers.
Mr. Margolick's story was scheduled to run in the October issue of Portfolio hitting newsstands on Sept. 23, but it was dropped at the last minute, sources said. The story may need to be recast. The magazine is still hopeful that Mr. Sulzberger may change his mind about an interview.
Both profiles are timed well. It's been an enormously eventful year for The Times, and Mr. Sulzberger personally. For the first time, the paper has resorted to newsroom layoffs; its stock price dropped to a decade low; the company allowed two hedge directors seats on its board (the first time since the paper went public that it has let outsiders take such positions); and after 33 years, Mr. Sulzberger and his wife, Gail Gregg, have separated.
According to sources, Mr. Hagan's piece is about the Sulzberger family and Mr. Margolick's original piece was a straight write-around on Mr. Sulzberger that did not probe his personal life. Mr. Margolick and Mr. Sulzberger have a previous relationship; they worked together on the Metro desk at the Times in the 1980s.
http://www.observer.com/2008/media/portfolio-new-york-magazine-preparing-write-around-profiles-arthur-sulzberger-jr#comments




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Bill Keller Follows Up to Staff: 'The Aim, of Course, Is to Save Money' (NYO)

And the memos just keep on coming. Here's Bill Keller's statement to the staff of The New York Times about the consolidation of Metro and Sports:
To the Staff: As you've learned from Arthur's message, beginning next month the paper will be reconfigured. Metro news will appear in the A-book along with International and National news. Sports will be combined with Bizday, except on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, when we will offer freestanding sports sections. I just want to elaborate a little on what this means for the newsroom.
The aim, of course, is to save money -- and, importantly, to do it without cutting back coverage. The savings come from eliminating an early shift in the printing plants on some days. We do not expect to cut the space devoted to these important and popular areas of coverage, or to reduce the staff of journalists who deliver that coverage. For readers who like to single out the Metro or Sports sections for the train ride to work, the new configuration will be a little less convenient. But there will be no less of the great news reports, enterprise, features and columns they expect from those departments.
There are even few offsetting gains for readers:
-- The new configuration will allow us to give readers a free-standing Arts section in the Saturday paper.
-- We will get some later deadlines, which will help us competitively. Monday Bizday, which is now on the early press run with deadlines in the afternoon, will be printed on the late run, something business editors have long craved. Thus business news that breaks on Sunday night can hereafter be displayed in its proper place, where readers most expect it. We are working to assure that the Arts section can also move to later deadlines most days of the week. We still have some details to work out about the timing and mechanics of the later close, but our ambition is to set deadlines so that late-breaking news from Hollywood or the art auctions or awards shows can be included in the section.
-- Metro stories that begin on A-1 will jump to Metro space. This year, to ease navigation of our news pages, we have mostly eliminated those annoying jumps from the front page into other sections. The result is that front-page Metro stories mostly jump into National space, where they may feel a little orphaned. Now they will jump into the company of other Metro stories. We have already begun a conversation with editors in Metro about how we assure, in practice, that we keep the light of Metro burning bright when there is no longer a freestanding Metro section. For one thing, I think we will want to be more willing to front urgent Metro stories in the metropolitan editions. For another, we will be looking for new features or improvements to our Metro coverage to reaffirm our commitment to local readers. We've also talked to Tom Jolly about using the front page more to billboard sports coverage.
And then there are the opportunities the Web presents us.
It's worth remembering that these cost savings serve a long-term purpose. While we are tightening wherever we prudently can, we are continuing to invest in our journalism, especially online, where our audience and revenues are rapidly growing. Metro and Sports have proven among the most innovative departments in exploiting the possibilties of the Web. Witness the Olympics coverage; witness City Room. My belief is that our continuing proliferation of great coverage on the Web will erase any questions about our commitment to Metro and Sports coverage.
The top editors at Metro and Sports have been briefed on this, as have the members of the Masthead. If you have questions or thoughts about this development, you know where to find us.
Best, Bill

http://www.observer.com:80/2008/media/bill-keller-follows-staff-aim-course-save-money

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Eschatological angst at the NYT?

I was critical of the NYT's piece on the launch of WSJ., in it's failure to be more specific and quote "the veiled swipe" that Robert Thomson, managing editor of The Journal, "proceeded to make...at T magazine".

In what I suppose could be defined as self-censorship, the veiled swipe was perhaps this remark quoted in the New York Observer's account of the same launch party.

"The eschatological angst that characterizes much of the newspaper industry does not define Dow Jones," said Robert Thomson.


Eschatological angst at the NYT? Never!





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'Black and White, Red All Over: Is 2008 the Worst Year in Modern Newspaper History?'

FROM THE NEW YORK OBSERVER

On Wednesday morning at 11 a.m., Arthur Sulzberger and Janet Robinson will be managing a conference call that, from the looks of it, won't be much fun. They'll be reporting The New York Times Company's second-quarter earnings. Last time they did one of quarterly earnings calls, The Times reported big losses; there was a plan to cut 100 newsroom jobs, some through straight-up layoffs rather than superannuation and retirement deals. And in the past few weeks, it's only gotten worse: the company's stock has fallen to a decade low, and tumbled more than 15 percent in just this month. The Times is hardly alone. It trickles in day by day: more news of lost jobs and tumbling stocks for major newspapers and their parent companies. But as bad as newspapers have been doing—it's been conventional wisdom for a few years now—the industry is actually doing much worse than most ever anticipated, and that's become painfully clear over the past two months. At the beginning of the year, things didn't look so bad. There was bad news, but it seemed consistent with what we've been getting warnings about for years now: In February, The New York Times announced it would cut 100 jobs from its newsroom, including laying people off for the first time ever. That same month, the L.A. Times publisher David Hiller sent out an announcement as well: He said up to 150 jobs would be lost across the L.A. Times media group (which includes Spanish paper Hoy and other community papers). When Russ Stanton was named the paper's editor a day after that memo was sent out, he said he was "hopping mad over this seemingly endless ‘Groundhog Day' nightmare. We in the newsroom need to figure out how to break this self-defeating cycle before it does indeed result in our defeat." Sam Zell, the brand new owner of the paper's parent company, the Tribune Company, said: "Unfortunately, I can't turn this ship from its course of the past 10 years within just a few months." He added, "But, make no mistake. This is not my ultimate strategy for our company." The February cuts at The Times and the other Tribune papers looked like a one-time deal. Despite the undeniable blow to all these newsrooms, it seemed Mr. Zell was just clearing out some fat, and if there were future cuts, maybe they'd happen next year. And indeed, things were beginning to look up. In June, Russ Stanton told MediaBistro that morale was starting to reappear at the paper and that people were "focused solely on doing great work and good stories and terrific journalism." And then Sam Zell threw all that out the window the next day. "What has become clear as we have gotten intimately familiar with the business is that the model for newspapers no longer works," he said in a memo. Ad revenue, as bad as its been in recent years, fell to levels that no one had anticipated either at Tribune papers or in the industry overall. Last year, ad revenue dropped 8 percent from 2006; this year there has been a double-digit decline from even that poor performance. "It's going a lot worse than anybody predicted, and if we have double-digit ad declines for two years, some newspapers will be in real financial jeopardy," Edward Atorino, an analyst at the Benchmark Company, told The New York Times in June. After gutting those 150 jobs earlier in the year, the L.A. Times fired 150 more people from its newsroom this past week. And the body count is getting larger all around the Tribune. This year, The Baltimore Sun is cutting about 100 jobs; the Chicago Tribune announced recently it would cut 80; the Sun-Sentinel about 50; the Hartford Courant would cut 57; and the Orlando Senintel about 50. Last week, newsroom employees at the Sun picketed their building, carrying slogans calling for Mr. Zell's ouster. But, of course, these problems are not just slamming Mr. Zell. There was that business last week with Times stock dropping 15 percent in one week, to a decade low. Over the past week or so, the paper's stock has consistently been hovering in the $12 range, whereas it was batting around $14 just a few weeks ago. The company's stock began to fall after Craig Huber, an analyst for Lehman Brothers, wrote earlier this month in a letter to clients about his surprise that ad revenue is projecting a 9.1 percent decline this year, more than the 7.2 percent previously projected. Ad sales next year probably will fall 7.5 percent, compared with his earlier estimate of 6 percent, he said. Last year's purchase of Dow Jones Inc. by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. was seen as a sign that something interesting could still happen with newspapers. Mr. Murdoch andThe Wall Street Journal's managing editor Robert Thomson have been promising to invest money in the paper. But they also cut 50 jobs last week, and closed most of the paper's editorial operations in South Brunswick, an emotionally fraught decision since that was the paper's home base after the Sept. 11 attacks closed their downtown newsroom for months. It's obviously easy to look at ad revenues and a tanking economy and point toward that and blame this year on that. But there are other theories. "Because we are in the newspaper industry, we spend a lot of time writing about the demise of newspapers," Katharine Weymouth, the new publisher of The Washington Post, told The Observer last week. "Nobody—I mean, we never see Katie Couric doing a 20-minute segment on the evening news talking about the audience that the nightly news is losing. I mean, they just don't do those stories, right? We write a little obsessively about our own industry, I think. But when you look at the real story with what's happening with newspapers, is there a seismic shift going on? Absolutely. Are ad revenues plummeting? Absolutely. But there is still a very good story." But even she conceded: "This is not me being Pollyannaish," she said. "It's real." Good luck, Arthur and Janet

http://www.observer.com:80/2008/media/black-and-white-red-all-over-2008-worst-year-modern-newspaper-history


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