

A relaunch for The New Yorker, with high stakes - kanamekun
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2014/07/8549298/relaunch-emthe-new-yorkerem-high-stakes

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subdane
I don't know if the relaunch will work or not because I don't know if the web
is fundamentally changing what (topic, length) we want to read. I do know
they're sitting on a trove of evergreen content. A few years ago I rented a
cabin in the woods for a month - no internet. There was a stack of 5 year old
New Yorkers and I read all of them. I was blown away by the quality and
timelessness of the writing. I had never paid much attention to it before, but
I became a subscriber after that.

~~~
sanderjd
I read an article about the trapped Chilean miners a week or two ago, and it
occurred to me while reading it that it would have made no difference at all
if it were written decades ago about an event I had never heard of; I still
would have been engaged and deeply enjoyed its storytelling. I wish other
publications would figure out a way to be more like the New Yorker, rather
than the other way around.

~~~
dvcc
I recently reluctantly (so much out there for free) subscribed to the New
Yorker, as a way of disconnecting myself. The first story I opened up to was
the Chilean miners, I was in love.

I wish we were more willing to pay, but it just seems like the internet has
created this expectation of free and plentiful, hope it doesn't go down that
road.

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digisth
I tried out a subscription recently (before today's changeover), and sent them
an email with my issues. Some have been fixed, but they still have a ways to
go:

\- The PDF archives. This was a disaster. Very glad that they fixed this.

\- Integrated account system. Not fixed. There are separate logins for
customer care, the regular web site, and the subscription management. This
needs to be integrated.

\- Issues with the login system generally. It sometimes takes a half dozen
attempts to recognize that I have an account (password is saved.) Puzzling,
and frustrating, especially when trying to check on a subscription. Not fixed.

\- Painfully slow subscription turn-up time. My confirmation email took nearly
a half hour to arrive. Unsure if this is fixed.

\- Search. Much better UX now, though many of the results are 404s. I assume
they are still working on this, but as it stands, not usable.

\- Overall look and feel. Improved. Happy with this.

Hopefully they fix the above over the next few months. The content is
excellent, but the rest needs work still.

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jessaustin
Can't help but wonder about the paywall-everything approach after seeing
several nice articles of theirs on HN today.

Fairly hilarious ageism-in-editing:

 _Due to a transcription error, an earlier version of this article misquoted
Nicholas Thompson talking about Roger Angell. The phrase Thompson used was
that he "writes wonderfully about what it means to blog." Originally we had it
as "might wonder about what it means to blog."_

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bogs_carut
I'm actually curious as to how many HN users find The New Yorker useful or
insightful. It's always struck me as rather middlebrow and perhaps couched in
the would-be-elitism of the east coast.

~~~
garethsprice
Most of my reading and thinking since childhood has been around technology.
The New Yorker is, for me, a gentle tour around "the arts" as I have no
education in that area (hence 'highbrow' art/literary writing goes right over
my head).

It's like a conversation with an older, smarter, slightly pretentious friend
who went off to theater school while you stayed up writing code all night.

The web is full of snack-size bites of information, but lacks context. The New
Yorker (and The Economist) are great for providing deeper insight and creating
links between stories, or leading you to thoughts that you wouldn't normally
have clicking hundreds of links on Google News, HNN, HuffPo, TechCrunch etc.

It's good to read as much as you can, especially things that are outside your
normal horizons.

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masnick
Finally. Until now, AFAIK there was no way to get access to some newly
published articles digitally without (a) going through their terrible iOS app
or (b) going through this weird browser based magazine simulator. Both
required a subscription. Neither allowed you to put text into a read-it-later
application, and until recently the font size on the iOS app was unreadably
small and not resizable.

The New Yorker has such great content – I'm excited they are adopting a less
user-hostile interface for accessing it.

------
zaroth

      Online editor Nicholas Thompson, who is spearheading today’s relaunch, put the 
      challenge succinctly:
    
      “What we’re trying to do,” he said, “is to make a website that is to the 
      Internet what the magazine is to all other magazines.”
    

And then there's this gem;

    
    
      While The New Yorker originally provided magazine writers— who sign a contract 
      each year promising a salary in exchange for the delivery of a certain word 
      count—no extra compensation for blogging, doing it instead as a sort of favor 
      to previous web editors like Avi Zenilman or to Remnick, it has recently paid 
      about $250 per post, sources told Capital.
    

It seems like writers of this caliber should be able to maximize their
earnings by monetizing their own content directly. But then you realize, wow,
monetizing distribution, especially at a micro-scale, is a really hard, and
really interesting unsolved problem.

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grayclhn
For people who don't know about it: the New Yorker's news blog is pretty
great.

web: [http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-
desk](http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk)

feed: [http://www.newyorker.com/feed/news](http://www.newyorker.com/feed/news)

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ireadzalot
Now, if they stopped using that crappy app that can't even do a background
download and come up with a better app, that would make the redesign more
complete.

~~~
julienchastang
True that background downloads are a pain, though occasionally they
mysteriously work when a new New Yorker appears on Monday morning. But apart
from that annoyance, I am generally pretty happy with the New Yorker app.
Quickly browsing through all the cartoons is nice. I heard once that it was
one of the few success stories in online journalism (i.e., users are actually
paying for news content). Is this still true?

~~~
csinchok
Last I knew, iOS Newsstand apps were allowed to do a special push to the app
in the background—but only as often as the physical issue was released. So, it
might be that they get to do a background push once a week, and aside from
that, all downloads have to be started while the app is open.

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contingencies
Can't see the images on slideshow pages because I block analytics providers.
Step backwards, New Yorker, and this is coming from a non-American who semi-
frequently buys your print issues. I used to love your little monocle man!

