The New York Times Company announced this morning that it will be introducing a paid, metered model for NYTimes.com at the beginning of 2011.
The publisher will offer users free access to an unspecified set number of articles per month and then charge users once they exceed that number.
The New York Times says this will enable NYTimes.com to create a second revenue stream while still preserving its advertising business, for which digital now makes up about a quarter of its total advertising revenues. In addition, the company says, it will also provide the “necessary flexibility to keep an appropriate ratio between free and paid content and stay connected to a search-driven Web”. → Read More
Should Santa leave a Sony Reader Daily Edition e-reader under your Christmas tree (or maybe you just like to buy fancy things on your own), you’ll be pleased to know that you’ll have a few more sources of content to choose from. Sony has agreed to deals bringing The New York Times, The Dallas Morning News, and The Baltimore Sun (among others) to the device. And there was much rejoicing. Presumably. → Read More
The New York Times Company is considering the launch of a brand new online news reader that would let people experience the consumption of NYTimes.com content in an entirely new and fairly innovative way. The publisher has reached out to members of its Insight Lab to get some rudimentary feedback on the new reader prototype and to help settle the naming issue.
Insight Labs members can test out the new prototype on a live website, which means you can, too. All you need to do is head over to this web page and you’ll be able to play around with the ‘newview’ as well. → Read More
It was another bleak quarter for the New York Times, which keeps on shrinking. The New York Times announced third quarter earnings this morning. Total revenues were down 17 percent to $571 million. Of that advertising revenues decreased 27 percent to $291 million, and the online advertising portion was down 8.2 percent to $68 million.
The earnings report follows yet more newsroom cuts of 100 people announced last week. There is a ray of hope, though, that the worst may be behind the storied newspaper company. → Read More
Apparently, the New York Times is still unsure whether its reporters should be allowed to Tweet or not. Intrigued by this tweet from writer and consultant Stowe Boyd, I registered for the New York Times’ Insight Lab, an online community / focus group made up of Times readers interested in providing the media company with direct feedback.
The homepage features a quick poll asking members if they want to see Times’ reporters and editors on Twitter or not. I guess this is the most pressing issue the New York Times wants to hear from its readers about.
For some reason, close to three quarters of the respondents indicated that they’d prefer if the journalists stay far away from the micro-sharing service. Only 7 percent had no idea what Twitter is. → Read More
There are two interesting things about the new New York Times Reader application. First, the company has abandoned SilverLight for Adobe Air, thereby ensuring cross-platform compatibility without that nasty Microsoft aftertaste. Second, the application is great.
Full disclosure: I’m a regular contributor to the NYT but I’m not employed by them full-time and act as a freelancer. But I still read the paper every day.
Now, for the good stuff. I used the earlier app briefly and put it away. I find that this new version is much cleaner than the earlier iteration. The front page is extremely readable and sections are clearly laid out. The application stores up to seven days of content and includes the crosswords as well as much of the standard print layout. You can’t do a full, site-wide search through the app simply because that data isn’t there. However, you can read the paper on a laptop. on a laptop. → Read More
The advertising outlook for newspapers is going from awful to horrendous. The New York Times announced first quarter earnings today, revealing that total advertising revenues for its news media group (which includes the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and other regional newspapers) declined 28.4 percent, versus an 18.4 percent declinelast quarter. So the rate of decline for is intensifying
Internet advertising revenues declined 6.1 percent to $67.6 million, compared to a 3.5 percent decline last quarter. The advertising situation at About.com is more “anemic” than at NYTimes.com, although cost-per-click rates at About.com seem to be holding up. Total advertising revenues were $335 million in the quarter and all revenues, including circulation, were $609 million. The company as a whole posted a net loss of $74.2 million. In other words, the New York Times lost more money across the board than it made from Internet advertising. → Read More
Earlier today I covered two new URL shortening services, UnHub and LNK.by, the latest additions to the plethora of basic web applications that many people are growing accustomed to for sharing links on micro-sharing services and social networking sites.
And just when I thought I’d had it with that type of service for a while, we caught wind of one that made me raise my eyebrows. Enter NytUrl, the ‘trusted’ URL shortener for NYtimes.com articles. Update: The site and all the redirects were taken down “due to abuse.”
According to the website, the service shortens URLs for NYTimes.com articles, although a quick test shows that it’s definitely not restricted to other websites (see http://nyturl.com/34 and http://nyturl.com/35), even if it occasionally says the URL is not valid for any other site. This of course defeats the entire purpose of the service, which is to reassure people clicking the links that they’ll wind up on the NYTimes.com website. My guess is that the ability to add links to other websites will be disabled soon enough. → Read More
Once again, Google is the favorite bogeyman responsible for the rapid deterioration in the health of the news industry. This time it is Nick Carr doing the finger-pointing, describing Google as the most powerful middleman in news:
When a middleman controls a market, the supplier has no real choice but to work with the middleman – even if the middleman makes it impossible for the supplier to make money.
So how powerful is Google when it comes to parceling out traffic to news sites? If you are talking about Google News, the answer is that it is not quite as powerful as you might think. In the U.S., Google News is overshadowed by both Yahoo News and even the sites controlled by the New York Times (which includes NYTimes.com, Boston.com, HeraldTribune.com, and several other newspaper sites). According to comScore, Google News attracted 16.2 million unique visitors in the U.S. in February, compared to 42.3 million for Yahoo News and 46.2 million for the sites operated by New York Times Digital.
So Google News is not the middleman here. Let’s just put that notion to rest. Yahoo News is three times as large, and Yahoo sends even more traffic to newspaper sites from other parts of Yahoo through its online newspaper consortium. → Read More
With the end of the first quarter of the 2009 almost here, even the strongest companies companies are making last-minute layoffs to shave costs. Today, layoffs were announced across the tech sector, from IBM to Google to Amazon. The biggest layoffs came from IBM, where 5,000 people are losing their jobs in the U.S.. Amazon cut 210 people at three distribution centers in Nevada, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. Google also announced layoffs of 200 people from sales and marketing (so far, engineers have been spared). In all three cases, the job cuts amounted to roughly one percent of each company’s global workforce. The New York Times also announced a 5 percent cut of its newsroom business operations, or 100 people.
It is not as if the payroll reductions will help save the quarter or even have a material impact on it. But the companies can point to the measures during their conference calls with investors and analysts and project the savings going forward.
We’ve added the job cuts to our Layoff Tracker. To see who is hiring, check out our CrunchBoard. → Read More
If this post on a local blog about Brooklyn has it right, the NY Times will be debuting a neighborhood blog project next week on Monday. Here’s the gist:
Look out, local bloggers, the Gray Lady is moving in on your turf. Starting next week, The New York Times will be rolling out a neighborhood blog initiative starting mid-day on Monday. Our home soil of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill will be one of the two pilot sites (the other site will cover Millburn, Maplewood and South Orange in New Jersey). According to an email that was forwarded to us, the subject matter will include “cultural events, bar and restaurant openings, real estate, arts, fashion, health, social concerns and anything else that goes on in the ‘SoHo of Brooklyn.’”
The advertising situation at the New York Times is not getting any better. Today, the company released its fourth quarter earnings. Total advertising revenues were down 13.1 percent in the quarter to $1.8 billion. Of that, its total Internet advertising revenues (from NYTimes.com, Boston.com, and About.com primarily) was only $$81.9 million, down 3.5 percent.
Internet advertising only accounts for 12 percent of the company’s annual revenues (for the year, it made $309 million from Internet advertising, up 9.3 percent). But as one of the largest media sites on the Web it is an important bellwether.
When the New York Times reported last November was the first time Internet advertising revenues declined (by 3.8 percent), I called it the canary in the coalmine. In December, things took a turn for the worse, with Internet advertising revenues dropping an even steeper 12.7 percent. → Read More
In what may be an early indicator of broader Web advertising trends, the New York Times announced today that it saw total Internet advertising revenues decline 3.8 percent in November. This compares to a total decrease of 21.2 percent for all advertising at media company, most of which is print advertising. The New York Times releases financial data on a monthly basis, and this was the first time it has reported an actual decrease in Internet advertising revenues. (Internet advertising revenues for the year through November are still up 11.6 percent).
The NYT’s digital properties, which include NYTimes.com, Boston.com, and About.com, attracted 47 million unique visitors in November and collectively would have been the 16th largest site on the Web, according to comScore. In the third quarter, online advertising ground to a halt at the largest Web companies. → Read More
It used to be that when a newspaper put out an “Extra” edition, it was filled with stories written by its reporters who had toiled away the night to cover some breaking news or collection of stories. Today, the New York Times is redefining “Extra” as stories written by others. It is turning on a new feature on its homepage called Times Extra that will start adding links from elsewhere underneath the headlines of its own articles. The related links are from other news sites and blogs (even the Wall Street Journal), with the source highlighted in green to differentiate them from the New York Times’ own stories.
As you can see from the screenshot, this adds a lot of unnecessary clutter on the page. (Don’t worry, it’s optional. That’s why they call it a beta). The links come from Blogrunner, the buzz aggregator the New York Times bought in 2006 2005. Blogrunner is a Techmeme competitor, except that it doesn’t really compete that well (see traffic chart below). → Read More
The New York Times is hurting financially these days, and its online business doesn’t seem to be helping much, but at least it keeps pushing forward. One area where the NYTimes.com has put a lot of effort is in video, and it has just redesigned its video page around the new Brightcove 3 player. Previously, the NYTimes was using the FeedRoom as its main video platform. (This swap doesn’t come out of the blue. The New York Times is an investor in Brightcove). → Read More
Today, in conjunction with the 1.0 release of Adobe AIR, the digital labs of the New York Times Co. is releasing an application in public beta called ShifD. An early version of the app won a Yahoo Hack Day last June. It is designed to let users easily shift notes, links, and addresses between their computers and their mobile phones. Instead of e-mailing yourself notes to remind yourself to do something or links to stories you want to read, you put them into ShifD and create a feed that is automatically available on your mobile phone. You can use a standalone Adobe Air app on your desktop or a regular Web browser. On your mobile phone, ShifD supports most mobile Web browsers, and is also offering customized versions for the iPhone and the Blackberry. You can enter notes back into your SHifD account from you mobile phone by texting to “SHIFD”. It seems like a lot of extra effort just to sync a limited number of things between your computer and your phone. There are more comprehensive syncing options out there, and it is not too hard to access a regular bookmarking service, such as del.icio.us, from your mobile phone (see mobilicio.us). As for addresses, Google Maps and Yahoo Maps, both have mobile options as well. So there is nothing new that ShifD allows you to do. But it does tie those three use case (notes, links, and places) together in an elegant way. It makes a lot more sense for people with less capable phones. Otherwise, I’d argue that e-mailing yourself such reminders and links to your Blackberry or iPhone—or tapping into the mobile versions of existing services you already use—is probably more efficient. Those of you who decide to try it out, tell us what you think in comments. CrunchBase Information New York Times ShifD Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Four leading US newspaper companies are to announce a new joint company today to sell targeted local online advertising on their respective sites. The Tribune Company, the Gannett Company, the Hearst Corporation and The New York Times Company will jointly own quadrantONE, with a base in Chicago that will employ 17 people. According to the NY Times, advertising space will be sold in papers including The Los Angeles Times, The Des Moines Register, The Houston Chronicle and The Boston Globe. However titles considered to be not local will not be included in the deal, including USA Today, The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune. The new company is said to be focused on offering advertisers scale in ad buys, with the newspaper companies themselves maintaining control. The move comes as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft all target online mainstream media news sites, and it would appear that in part the move is also a reaction to that, with Lincoln Millstein from Hearst Newspapers saying simply “We want to control our own destiny.” The combined reach of quadrantONE’s partner sites will be 50 million unique visitors a month. → Read More
This week’s Old Gray Lady Magazine put together a list of the best ideas of the year, some of them tech-y and some of them a-waste-of-everyone’s-time-y. Of the many great ideas, you might want to check out the best way to deflect an asteroid (one of my biggest concerns), the electric hockey skate, posthumous e-mail and the accidental YouTube audition. For that one, think that Britney Spears guy. All in all, the full list is an excellent way to start your Monday morning. Only nine hours till 5:00 pm now. The Seventh Annual Year in Ideas [New York Times Magazine] → Read More
It’s a proud day for CrunchGear.com as our own intrepid Editor-in-Chief, John "Key Krusher" Biggs has been published on The New York Times’ web site with two eyeball-melting articles about personal technology devices. Take a hit off of the Lenovo ThinkStation D10 if you’re nasty or chill out with the Nokia N82 if you wanna slow things down a bit. Either way, you’re in for some sweet, sweet readables. ThinkStation D10 Computer From Lenovo and A Nokia Camera Phone That’s More Like a Camera With a Phone Attached [New York Times] → Read More
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