
The New York Times Claws Its Way into the Future - donohoe
https://www.wired.com/2017/02/new-york-times-digital-journalism
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stephancoral
As someone who worked for the NYT until recently, I can tell you a major thing
holding the Times back is the sheer amount of bloat and middle management in
the business, especially tech, side of things. Useful, even revenue-generating
projects are sidelined for political reasons (such as encroaching on another
manager's 'territory') and months of work had been negated because a higher
level 'architect' decided that only three languages can be used internally.
Legacy projects are held on _way_ past their sunset - that means literally
months of dev time devoted to projects used by maybe a dozen people. Don't
even get me started on the architectural inefficiencies that rack up tens of
thousands of dollars a week to AWS (soon to be Google because the tech org
loves to switch providers every year, also resulting in massive amounts of
redundant work). The NYT online search is one area that is just bleeding cash
- it requires a lot of machinery for very little. That's money that could be
used to hire journalists and finance deep investigative dives.

The NYT does incredible work. It just needs to take a hard look at it's
digital side and trim a lot of the fat. There's a lot of churn and little long
term vision. Unfortunately layoffs / firings are rare in the tech org but
buyouts and their ilk are widespread in the newsroom.

~~~
volkadav
Is one of the three languages context still, or did they finally get rid of
all that? ;)

(nytd 2008-2010)

~~~
stephancoral
Hahah thankfully the usage and number of DSLs has dropped significantly. I
still had to write stuff using Drools
([https://www.drools.org/](https://www.drools.org/)) tho which was the worst
thing I've ever had to do in my dev career

I believe the Holy Three are Python, Go, and Java. Personally the fact that Go
is on there totally invalidates the list for me. It upset a lot of other
people, too, because it's not very widely used in the org and is just a pet
favorite of one of the higher ups. Was a serious source of friction.

~~~
adammck
Hello! I was one of those annoying "architects" saying no, but it wasn't
because only three languages are allowed. When I left the Times about six
months ago, systems were actively being developed in the following languages:
PHP, Java, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, Go, Scala. (And ObjC and Swift, if you
want to count those.) Plenty of unmaintained legacy systems in other
languages, too. So proposals to add yet another language (Clojure, right?)
were I think understandably received with some skepticism. It's not that it
couldn't happen, just that there'd have to be a hell of a good reason, and
there wasn't. It was unfortunate that months of work were invested before a
proposal was written, but that wouldn't have been a very good reason to
approve it.

For what it's worth, I agree with almost everything else you said.

~~~
stephancoral
Thank you for the clarification. I was told by my manager that new projects
could only be written in the three above-mentioned languages so I was just
going by that. And yes I was part of the Clojure lobby haha.

I really do hope they streamline a bit of the bloat in tech. It's a real
shame. So many dev hours wasted in meetings. So many PMs who know more about
the intricacies of Kanban and JIRA ticketing but nothing about the product.
There's a lot of talent there, though. I think it can be done.

------
pdog
There's Netflix for television and Spotify for music, so it's almost
inevitable there's going to be a "Netflix for journalism." (Even with
competitors offering news supported by advertising for free, it's still a
billion dollar market.)

But... why would it be the _Times_? Incumbents have a poor track record of
avoiding disruption by ambitious upstarts.

~~~
f_allwein
Well, there is [https://www.pressreader.com](https://www.pressreader.com) ,
which has the potential to be Netflix for journalism. Would be great if more
publishers worked with them.

~~~
svachalek
This looks like Yet Another News Aggregator. Google and Yahoo have had them
for years (decades?) among many others.

A true game changer would have to be one that people paid money for, and
served ultimately to pay for real journalism. That has also been tried many
times, with no success that I'm aware of.

I don't mind paying for news, but most newspapers charge in the range of
$20-$40 a month for digital subscriptions which just seems outrageous to me. I
can listen to a bottomless well of music for $10/mo on Spotify, watch a huge
catalog of shows and movies on Netflix for roughly $10/mo, or subscribe to a
handful of newspapers for $200/mo. Is journalism so, so much more expensive to
produce than entertainment?

~~~
PlaceFan
> Is journalism so, so much more expensive to produce than entertainment?

There's a temporal component here that's much more important for journalism
than it is for those other two forms of entertainment.

For example, The Shawshank Redemption was made 23 years ago and is still a
fantastic movie: People will still pay to watch that movie. In contrast, very
few people will pay money to read a news article from even two days ago (let
alone 23 years ago).

Sony could never produce another movie again and have a sizable revenue stream
just from distribution rights on their existing film catalog. The NYT can't
really do that, the demand for old news articles just isn't that great.

The equivalent of a news subscription then isn't really Netflix or Spotify:
It's going to the movies, or going to a concert, or buying an album. All of
which are notoriously considered to be expensive affairs.

I'd even go so far as to say the NYT would probably absolutely let you read
older articles for cheap (a few $ a month), but the demand for that is non-
existent so it's silly to even offer.

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hackuser
The main problem, IMHO, is that they are trying to make this massive,
expensive transition under an artificial constraint: That the Sulzbergers
retain control of the organization:

1) They lack capital (AFAICT) and have to desperately worry about getting the
subscription model to work and soon. The Washington Post was sold to Jeff
Bezos; from what I've read, Bezos encourages them to experiment, and pointed
out that he could lose $100 million on the Post per year for 100 years (or
something like that), and he'd still be one of the wealthiest people in the
world.

The NY Times is not just a family business, it's an institution that is
extremely important to the public welfare. To hold onto it and risk its future
when it would be safe in others' hands is very selfish. Of course they
shouldn't sell it to just anyone, but there are plenty out there who would be
responsible owners.

2) Last names and genetic inheritance are a very poor way to select business
leaders, especially at a time that requires an extraordinary one. What an
incredible opportunity for a brilliant person - if only they would stand back,
sit on the board, and let a professional run the show.

EDIT: From the article: "Family control is one of the competitive advantages
of The New York Times—there is no plan B for Sulzberger or his family."

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sharkjacobs
I like the NYT because they feel comfortable and trustworthy insofar as I know
what to expect from them and understand the context of their work.

I hope I still like whatever they become after this pivot.

I do hope they succeed even if I don't like their new form, as I wish the best
for any attempt to make journalism less dependent on advertising.

------
gumby
This part was fascinating:

> [The innovation report was leaked to BuzzFeed] The BuzzFeed leak was
> devastating for Sulzberger—“a moment of panic,” he says. “We had written a
> pretty frank and candid document expressly for a small group of leaders...
> it felt like our dirty laundry was being aired.” ...he realized within a few
> days that the public scrutiny had turned an administrative white paper into
> a media rally­ing cry.

They never would have gotten the change they need without the leak! It's like
WH staffers leaking to Fox to get the president's attention.

When I read the NYT online I feel like they still can't decide whether to
stick with the legacy structure (most articles can't be commented on, still
the newspapery structure) or go 100% the other way (the big, technically-
complex, unreadable "snow" piece). The Economist has the same problem.

