

What if: The New New York Times - cwan
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/30/what-if-the-new-new-york-times/

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greyman
Arrington seems to suggest that NYT's unprofitability is due to its size, and
that when the executives salaries will be slashed, the much smaller company
can fare better. But he fails to realize, that the most significant expenses
are due to the reporting itself.

For example, when NYT sends a reporter and a photographer to Iran to cover
elections, it is of course much more expensive than one Arrington's blogger,
who just sits home, drink coffee and muses about whether Twitter is better
than Friendfeed or Friendfeed is better than Twitter.

I think, that while a bunch of agile bloggers like Arrington, Scoble, people
in Gizmodo or Engadget are able to compete with MSM in Tech coverage, they
would hardly compete with general news coverage, since that requires much
more.

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raphar
Michael Arrington is talking about building 'an inversion', ROI, revenues &
gains.

He never mentions building value or building a company where people matters:
'Ill pay you 200k, but if you dont reach 1 million hits monthly with your
stories, you'll be fired'. Quality is barely mentioned and the journalist are
evaluated by quantity of followers.

He also never mentions building a company with other mission than making
money.

Perharps it's that i'm old fashioned, but I don't think it would be a nice
place to work (unless you are for the $$$) and in the long run it wont be an
interesting site to read.

~~~
derefr
> ...in the long run it wont be an interesting site to read.

If it isn't interesting to read, how will it make money?

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grandalf
One claim Techcrunch makes that I'd disagree with is that the best reporters
are responsible for most page views.

Looking at the "most read articles" list, there may be one or two news
articles in it at a given time, but there are usually a few snarky op-eds
(Dowd or Krugman) and at least a few human interest stories.

The standard for many of the non hard news stories seems to be to weave a
story one quote at a time. So, for example, a story about the economic
downturn might quote one person who lost a job saying "things have been really
hard for the past few months" and then draw some grand conclusions without any
quotes from legitimate experts, etc.

This is fine when it's a story about some human interest topic, but I imagine
any serious journalist would never even want to write such articles.

The problem for traditional news organizations is that those are the articles
people want, not some arcane investigative story.

For an example of this, compare "Most Read" to "Most Blogged" articles. The
bloggers are typically focusing on the real news at any given time (a small
handful of stories) and are less interested in the popular stuff (which is
what they themselves are competing with)...

This is also why most papers run so many AP stories -- doing real journalism
is much harder than just whipping up a quick story with a few loose quotes,
etc.

~~~
cschwarm
> This is fine when it's a story about some human interest topic, but I
> imagine any serious journalist would never even want to write such articles.

Well, I'd say your imagination is slightly misleading, then. ;-) Of course, we
may now debate what you mean by "serious journalists" but let's put that
aside.

What every journalist wants, usually, is that his stories are read! Even you
want to inform people you need them to read your story, first. One method is
to write compelling headlines and teasers, for example. Sometimes, that's
sufficient.

Another one, as you say, is to start with the "human side". But how you
proceed, then, is often up to you: You may get deep into the topic, explore
the problem behind the human story, write about pro's and con's, introducing
the actors or stake holders, describe their opinions, and so on. Usually, you
end by getting back to the human example you introduced in the beginning.

The simple truth is that every story has a human side. Nearly everything
affects someone. If it doesn't, it's simply not interesting to anybody. It's
not news.

Sure, there's also the common pieces, going after the Who, What, When, Where,
Why and How. That's the AP stuff. In contrast to want you believe, however,
they are easier to write! It's just six questions you got to answer. Follow
the Inverted Pyramid format and you're done.

Finding the human side, however, and making it believable and interesting is
real work and takes quite a lot of time and experience.

Of course, you can't write every piece like that. Going into all the details
of a story all the time would be boring and futile. So, both sorts have their
place. But if you have something that's abstract, unexpected or hard to
comprehend, starting with the human side is often the best way to go.

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DarkShikari
_Call it $12 million with benefits. Plus, they all have stock options in the
new comapny_

Sounds like Techcrunch could use some of those editors.

~~~
kingkawn
Perhaps where I work costs are out of control (likely), but health care and
benefits run closer to 35% of salary

~~~
Retric
Benifts tend to cap out so 40k /year for someone making 200k might not be
unreasonable. Granted, social secuirty and heathcare both cap out, if they
start adding a free car then benifits can keep going up.

He is forgetting about is travel expences and a subscription to the AP etc.
But his extra 50% buffor is probably not that far off but let's double it and
say 34 million a year. That's 34million$ * (1000 page views / 0.25$) / 52
weeks = ~650 million page views a week. Which is probably not that
unreasonable.

However, 50 reporters are not going to cover a fraction of what the The New
York Times covers.

~~~
kingkawn
Yeah, I think the preference for small and nimble disregards the power that a
large organization can throw around when needed.

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edw519
"Journalism Isn’t Dead. Just The Old Business Part Of It."

This is a huge assumption. I disagree with it. I say that journalism _is_
dead. Let me explain...

Turn on any television. Do it 3 or 4 times per day. Surf around the dial 2 or
3 times. I defy anyone to find anything resembling journalism.

Sit down for brunch on Sunday with 3 or 4 Sunday newspapers. Go through all of
them for 3 to 4 hours. Learn anything new? I didn't think so.

I bring up these 2 examples because they are my experience over the last 5
years. Television and print journalism are conflicts in terms. They are dead.
There's little difference between most newspapers and supermarket tabloids.
Heraldo from 10 years ago looks more professional than anything on TV.

Where does that leave us? With the internet. Yes, there's plenty of great
writing on-line, but it's buried among all the rest of the crap. Anyone can
say anything and they usually do. Readers here know how to separate the wheat
from the chaff, but mom and dad and Aunt Millie don't, so they're not getting
the news anymore. Most people aren't.

I admire OP's experiment of rescuing the business of journalism. I just wish
someone would think of an experiment to rescue the profession of journalism
first.

~~~
jacquesm
Sunday papers and TV are not exactly the right examples to search for real
journalism.

Try the Times, the Scotsman and the Washington post.

 _that_ is journalism. And it's not quite dead but I fail to see how they're
going to support their reporters, the current businessmodel is failing fast
and they don't seem to have any really good plans on replacing it.

~~~
uhuyvvty
But their business model isn't news - it is to be the PR and government
relations arm of whichever billionaire owns them. The Times is a cheap way for
Murdoch to make sure that the government gets the public opinion that is best
for his other businesses.

~~~
jacquesm
Yes, that's a part of it, but there is definitely something called journalism
going on there. It's just that it is coloured and not as objective as it
should be. Which is a pity and which is one of the reasons why centralizing
all this media power is a very bad thing.

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rawr
I don't know what the future of journalism is, but if it is techcrunch then we
are all F'd in the A.

~~~
nir
You know, the scary part is that the people who run NY Times and co seem to
actually take Arrington & his kind seriously.

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TweedHeads
No modern news outlet should have more than 100 employees of any kind. Period.

100 at the most, but you can easily run a media company or regional newspage
with 10 or 20 employees.

