In my latest for The Guardian, I take a look at Mark Bowden’s exceedingly tough Vanity Fair profile of New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. Bowden may be right in arguing that Sulzberger is not up to the job. But given the implosion of the newspaper business, would better leadership have made all that much difference?
Tag: New York Times
Will Hoyt write about the “Note to Readers”?
Here’s part of what New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt wrote about the paper’s report on John McCain’s non-affair last Feb. 24:
A newspaper cannot begin a story about the all-but-certain Republican presidential nominee with the suggestion of an extramarital affair with an attractive lobbyist 31 years his junior and expect readers to focus on anything other than what most of them did. And if a newspaper is going to suggest an improper sexual affair, whether editors think that is the central point or not, it owes readers more proof than The Times was able to provide.
Given that this is a libel settlement we’re talking about, Hoyt is unlikely to call the Times’ “A Note to Readers” for what it is. But unless he’s changed his mind, we know what he’s thinking.
The Times’ unromantic “Note to Readers”
From the New York Times’ “A Note to Readers,” published today as part of its libel-suit settlement with lobbyist Vicki Iseman:
The article did not state, and The Times did not intend to conclude, that Ms. Iseman had engaged in a romantic affair with Senator McCain …
From the Feb. 21 story at issue:
Convinced the relationship [with Iseman] had become romantic, some of his [McCain’s] top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.
Help me out here.
The two most successful papers in the U.S. Really.
Let’s take a time-out from the news apocalypse to acknowledge the two most successful newspapers in the United States: the New York Times and the Boston Globe.
What? Isn’t the financially ailing Times selling part of itself off to a shady Mexican billionaire? Isn’t the Globe, owned by the Times Co., losing a reported $1 million a week and eliminating 50 editorial positions?
Yes and yes. This week, though, the Nieman Journalism Lab pulled together a year’s worth of Web site figures — compiled by Nielsen and reported monthly by Editor & Publisher — and found that the Times’ and the Globe’s Web sites are far and away the most successful in their respective weight classes.
Among national papers, the Times has built such a huge lead over its rivals that there’s really no comparison. Look at the chart. With nearly 19.5 million unique visitors every month, the Times’ online readership is nearly double that of its closest competitor, USA Today.
The Globe’s Web site, Boston.com, ranked number six in the country, with 5.2 million unique visitors a month. If you consider the Los Angeles Times to be a national paper, then the Globe is by far the largest regional online newspaper.
One other thing. In December, visitors to the New York Times Web site spent an average of 33 minutes poking around. At the Globe, it was nearly 17 minutes. In other words, a substantial number of people are actually reading the paper on line, not just dipping in quickly from a search engine.
To be sure, there are some extenuating circumstances. According to the Nieman analysis, the Times’ average monthly uniques were driven up by the resignation of Eliot Spitzer as New York’s governor last March. The Globe benefited from Red Sox coverage during their September playoff drive. In fact, the Globe benefits from the Red Sox year-round, as Sox fans from around the country check in on a daily basis.
Still, this is further proof that what ails the newspaper business right now isn’t a lack of readers — it’s the collapse of the old business model, compounded by recession and debt.
If there’s any good news here, it’s that there are enough people who want what newspapers are giving them that there may be some way of figuring out the revenue dilemma.
The trouble with Brill’s not-so-secret memo
My apologies for not being right on top of this earlier in the week. I just had a chance to read Steven Brill’s no-longer-confidential memo, “Turning Around the Times — and Journalism,” posted on Romenesko, and I’ve got a few observations.
First, a bit of praise for Brill, who, near the beginning of his career, wrote one of the bravest books I’ve ever read — “The Teamsters,” about an organization that, at the time of publication (1979), was more a criminal enterprise than it was a union. I don’t know how Brill found the courage to start his car in the morning.
And though I’ve weighed in several times (here and here) on why it doesn’t make sense to think that newspapers will be able to charge a fee to their online customers, I understand the problem. Even though what you pay for a print edition doesn’t even cover the cost of manufacturing and distributing it, the fact — and the problem — is that print advertising is far more lucrative than online advertising. Never is a long time, but it’s beginning to look like Web advertising may never support the public-interest journalism on which a healthy, self-governing society depends.
So I’m sympathetic to, though not supportive of, Brill’s ideas for charging online customers. It’s possible that it might even work for the Times because of its unique appeal. There are probably quite a few people who’d pay for access to the Times, but not for anything else. And therein lies one of problems with his plan, though by no means the only one.
Here’s the biggest drawback I see in Brill’s proposal: it would end blogging, as valuable a journalistic form as has been developed since the inverted pyramid. A really good blog post might link to three, four or five news stories — maybe more. A really good blogger might skim through 10, 15 or 20 stories in the course of synthesizing them into that post. Finally, that blogger might look at many dozens of news sources on a regular or semi-regular basis.
Obviously, bloggers — most of whom are doing it for no money — cannot afford to subscribe to dozens of online newspapers and magazines. Even if they could, they want to know that when they link to particular stories, their readers will be able to follow the links and read those stories as well. How many online news sources is a typical blog reader supposed to subscribe to?
Micropayments, which Brill also mentions, get around this. Properly implemented, they’re deducted automatically. But though 10 cents an article might seem reasonable, do you really want to pay $1 to read a well-constructed blog post and follow all the links? Of course you don’t. No one is going to do such a thing.
Brill says that if the Times charges $1 per month to each of its 20 million unique monthly visitor, that would generate $240 million a year. I’ll withhold my sarcasm, because this is math, and experience tells me that I could be wrong. But it strikes me that Brill has convinced himself that the Times could get a buck out of every person who, at some point during the course of a month, clicks on a link to a Times story that he found via a search engine. Intuitively, it seems to me that they’re not going to do that, and I’m pretty sure Brill would concede the point if he’d think about it.
The only folks who are going to pay $1 a month are the journalism geeks like me, who actually prop open their laptops at breakfast and read a good chunk of the Times online. And I suspect the number of people who actually read the paper that way is far, far smaller than 20 million.
Case in point: Christian Science Monitor editor John Yemma told me last fall that 84 percent of visitors to the paper’s Web site come in via search engines, aggregators and blogs. Let’s say it’s the same for the Times. Let’s say you could get every one of the 16 percent who come in through the front door to pay $1 a month. That’s $38.4 million for the year, not $240 million.
I realize that my critique would appear to leave no way out of the dilemma in which the Times and other newspapers find themselves. I happen to think there may be more life left in the print edition than we all imagined a couple of years ago. I’d raise the price by quite a bit, maybe offer some premium, print-only features (heresy, I know, but worth thinking about) and perhaps offer those well-heeled customers access to some special services.
A solution? No. But it might work as a holding action until we can figure out what’s next.
Heck of a job, Arthur
No offense to New York Times media reporter Richard Pérez-Peña, but his story today on the New York Times Co. should be seen as the Times Co.’s best case for itself rather than as a tough-minded forensic overview. So in that respect it offers some interesting insights into how Arthur Sulzberger Jr. assesses his reign as chairman of the company and publisher of its flagship newspaper.
And yes, for the most part, Sulzberger thinks he’s doing a hell of a job. Pérez-Peña writes:
Newspaper industry analysts say that despite some published alarms to the contrary, the company has positioned itself well to ride out another year of recession, maybe two. The company still operates at a profit, and analysts say it might have gotten by without the [Carlos] Slim loan, but could not afford to take the risk because borrowing could be even harder in six months or a year.
“But,” said Edward Atorino, an analyst at Benchmark, a research firm, “I think they’ve put The New York Times out of danger.”
And did you know that Times Topics is now a competitor to Wikipedia? No, me either. And Jimmy Wales makes three.
There is no mention of whether the Times Co. would like to peddle the Boston Globe, the subject of near-constant speculation around here.
Pérez-Peña does point to some shortcomings. And the most eye-opening is this: between 1997 and 2004, the company bought back $2.7 billion in stock, a number that is now nearly four times the company’s entire market capitalization of about $726 million.
“[I]t outweighs the prices of all the other second-guessed moves combined,” Pérez-Peña writes, “and it would be more than enough to ensure the company’s security for years to come.”
All that aside, I suspect that Pérez-Peña’s fundamentally sunny take on his newspaper’s future is more accurate than the doomsday scenarios put forth in recent months by Henry Blodget of Silicon Alley and Michael Hirschorn of the Atlantic.
At least I hope so.
Gaddafi to Israel: Drop dead
In the endlessly depressing category of “you can’t make this stuff up,” the New York Times today runs an op-ed by erstwhile Boston Globe columnist Muammar Gaddafi, the terrorist-coddling, human rights-abusing dictator of Libya.
Gaddafi has a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: wipe Israel off the map. Funny, but I somehow knew he was going to say that.
The Globe’s Kevin Cullen weighs in usefully on Gaddafi today, and Universal Hub wraps up the whole miserable affair.
Note: Gaddafi, Qaddafi and Khadafy are all the same person. I’m going with Gaddafi because that’s how the Globe recently spelled it.
Why Caroline Kennedy dropped out
Looks like the truth is starting to come out about Caroline Kennedy’s now-ended bid for the Senate. The New York Post reports that Gov. David Paterson is letting it be known through an unnamed spokesman that he never intended to choose her. Among other things, it appears that she may have tax and nanny problems.
The New York Times is catching up, but according to the Politico’s Glenn Thrush, the Post is “lead sled dog on the Caroline exit fiasco.” No gold star for the Post, though, as it adds some entirely unsupported sleaze to the mix.
Accurate, but almost certainly not true
If the New York Times doesn’t want to run with something it can’t confirm, I’ve got no problem with that. Still, it’s a little unsettling to see the paper go with the patently ludicrous explanation from “a person told of her decision” that Caroline Kennedy is dropping out of the running for the U.S. Senate because of Ted Kennedy’s illness.
The New York Post, citing anonymous sources, reports that Kennedy withdrew after she learned that New York Gov. David Paterson wasn’t going to pick her.
Ted Kennedy has been fighting terminal brain cancer for months. His seizure yesterday, while scary, changes nothing.
It’s been obvious for some time now that Caroline Kennedy wasn’t going to the Senate. I guess her uncle’s health problems gave her a graceful exit. But that doesn’t mean the Times has to play along.
Obama for sale
The newspaper business may be hurting, but Barack Obama — whether he realizes it or not — is doing what he can to help.
The latest paper to cash in on Obama’s popularity is the Boston Herald. According to a newsroom source, the paper has published an ad-free, 32-page color magazine called “Boston Celebrates President Obama,” which will cost $2.99 when it hits newsstands tomorrow. Overseen by city editor Jennifer Miller, the magazine will include contributions by everyone from Keith Lockhart to Tom and Ray Magliozzi, the hosts of NPR’s “Car Talk.”
The Boston Globe, meanwhile, printed 65,000 copies of an eight-page extra on Tuesday afternoon, following Obama’s swearing-in. The Los Angeles Times and several other papers did the same, and those that didn’t printed more copies of today’s paper than usual.
The New York Times is being unusually aggressive. I managed to scarf a couple of copies on Election Day, visions of eventual eBay riches dancing in my head. Yet the Times is still selling copies of that day’s paper, and has now added today’s edition, along with a lapel pin and a photo. So much for the three copies I scored in Danvers Square at 5:30 this morning.
Maybe I should invest in those Obama coins that Montel Williams is pushing? Uh, I think not.