21 Jan 2009
To build a sustainable long-term business, we think the NYT needs to significantly cut costs and put itself in a position where it is ambivalent whether a subscriber reads the paper on paper or online (or both). It’s not there yet. The Wall Street Journal is.
— Save The New York Times (NYT) — Silicon Alley Insider
Henry Blodget has done some great work here, and I hope NYTCo Management reads these recommendations and thinks about them. I am loathe to admit that some, if not all, of these moves are necessary/critical, but the numbers we’ve all seen aren’t pretty.
I would absolutely be willing to pay $80 year for full access to the NYTimes online. I’d be willing to pay more, probably. Ten bucks a month, maybe even $20, would be well worth it for me (but then again I am probably a “super user” when it comes to the NYT).
I do not subscribe to the Times. I’ve been meaning to subscribe to the Fri/Sat/Sun package, but for some reason I just never pull the trigger and sign up. And that reason has to be that, instead of going downstairs to pick up the paper every day (I live on the 5th floor of a walkup, thankyouverymuch), I can read the paper in bed on my lappy and not have ink-stained hands or stacks of newspapers all over my apartment.
I subscribed to the Wall Street Journal for six months last year, and while getting the print edition was nice, I let that lapse in favor of having the full online access. It’s more than adequate.
Ironically, the way I use wsj.com is to scan through the “In Today’s Paper” section, which lays out the stories as they appear in the print edition. Why? Because then I get a sense of how they’re arranged, and I like to know how they fit in to the physical newspaper as I get a sense of what’s going on: op-eds in the back of the A-section, media news in the B-section, etc.
(Aside: more on this another time, but, to my mind, curation/prioritization of the news is an increasingly valuable service that newspapers provide in a world of unlimited online inventory and no shortage of content — and when I say “newspaper” here I do mean in the traditional ink-on-paper sense.)
Getting back to it: yes, sometimes it’s nice to physically pour over the paper with a a cup of coffee and draw moustaches on the pictures. Ultimately, however, I want the New York Times to continue to be great, and to be a strong business. Hell, I want that for pretty much every media outlet. Whether I can hold it in my hand doesn’t matter.
