Those who still purchase the New York Times are purchasing a legacy. Handing over that $1.25 for a weekday edition means putting one's trust in an eras-old publication that, readers believe, always delivers the goods.
But how much fun can you find in a newspaper? Print doesn't have to worry about "clickability." You already paid for the paper and chances are, you'll buy it again tomorrow. But the Times is losing money. (It will distract you from this fact by writing articles about how the Tribune Company is losing money). Nielsen data on the time users spent on the New York Times site this year increased only slightly; papers like the Seattle Times had much bigger gains (and yes, Tribune papers had losses).
What is the Times trying to do to fix this?
The tone of its articles is relaxing. Adam Nagourney has digressed from relative straight talk to uses of the second person and painterly, incomplete sentences.
Op-ed contributors are loosening their ties and conducting sparring matches in the liberating Blogs section of the Times site. (Just try keeping track of the number of blogs the Times has here; it might very well be 200.)
TV critics are trying to make regulars laugh, or recruit a different set of readers entirely, by writing more often about reality series (or is that just an unavoidable...er...reality of TV?)
Fancy graphics replace dramatic photographs to show how Obama's coolness spreads from white to black and old to young.
The Times' new method is to tap into what people really think: what Brooks really thinks. What Nagourney really thinks. What MTV viewers really think. The inside information, unless it means straight-up celebrity gossip. By the time you've finished a print newspaper, the whole picture has changed. Web news is there to fill in the gaps, give you updates, and above all, break the rules of paper. You'd never see David Brooks and Gail Collins sounding off on paper. "On paper," news is reliable and factual. On the Web, it's "all the cuts from our print articles that are fit to print (online)."
What's our obsession with the backstory, the background, the other side of the coin, the other side of the mirror? We've taken this task on with the corporate blog of findingDulcinea, which chronicles the experience of interviewing from the interviewer's perspective, and adds things that the interview doesn't. People undoubtedly want this, and benefit from it. But we, like the Times, continue to stress the importance of keeping a fence up. Deep thoughts go here, and essential information goes there.
The fear is that no one will want essential information at all in two, five, ten years. I rue the day the Times reports its readers are spending less time on the site than they once were. But wait! There is so much to do on the site! (it's almost--ahem--fatiguing).
There is no doubt that people want to delve deeper into news. But there is a difference between delving deeper into the thoughts, jokes, one-liners, asides, off-topic reflections, and novelist turns of phrase of journalists, and exploring the deep and complex history of a country like Gabon. When I'm selecting news stories to write on at fD, I often turn abroad to the BBC and the Guardian, two worldly papers with thoughtful, organized articles that reach outside the British Isles. On these sites, design additions, sidebars, and tools are utilitarian and simple to use. Sounding off occurs, but it retains the trappings of the old school, and it is strong and usually witty.
As an aside, one thing remains from the print edition of the New
York Times that should probably be killed: wistful, faux-thoughtful
headlines sawed in half by commas and full of innocuous verbs like
"eyes" and "battles." Most of them start with the word "for" (as in
"For Obama, New York is Goal") or "when" (as in "When Food Is the
Family Enterprise"). The best combine all the above features, and
perhaps add a couple of alliterations to create one hell of a
tongue-twister. Here are some winners:
Winning Again, Clinton Weighs Her Options
Far From Her Party’s Bitter Feuding, a Breezy Island Weekend for Clinton
A Battered Feeling at Obama’s Former Church
For English Studies, Students Say Goodbye to Dad
