The New York Times Company has teamed up with RMG Networks to have some of its digital content displayed on part of the latter’s network of out-of-home screens. The partnership is said to bring NYTimes content to some 850 screens, located in district cafés and eateries in the New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco markets.
The new initiative, dubbed “NYTimes.com Today”, will feature the latest news headlines, photos, and a selection of videos exclusively from NYTimes.com – along with advertising units – on the digital location-based network operated by RMG Networks. There’s also a mobile aspect to the story, as viewers can head to NYT2day.com on their phones to receive a direct link to the NYTimes.com Today mobile site, featuring the full articles displayed on the – smaller -screens.
Let’s take a closer look at the NYT’s newest distribution partner. → Read More
Earlier last week, New York Times reporter David Rohde escaped from a Taliban prison. He had been a Taliban hostage for the last seven months, but the general public had absolutely no clue. In a joint effort by The New York Times and Wikipedia, the story was kept quiet until his daring escape.
In November 2008, Rohde was captured and held hostage by the Taliban, along with a local reporter, Tahir Ludin, and their driver, Asadullah Mangal. But until he managed to escape, most of the general public had absolutely no clue. To prevent Rohde’s value in the eyes of his captors from rising, the New York Times kept more than 35 major news organizations from reporting on the story. They believed that the publicity from reporting his capture would inflate the value of Rohde’s life, increasing the difficulty of negotiating for Rohde’s release. Keeping 35 news organizations quiet was actually not the hard part – but staving off Wikipedia users from publishing the news? That was a bit trickier. → 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
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
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
The University of Michigan’s quarterly customer satisfaction index came out today, and in the Website category Google came out on top with a score of 86 out of 100 (up 10 percent from last year). Yahoo slipped 3 percent to a score of 77. MSN’s score was flat at 75, and tied with NYTimes.com and ABCNews.com. AOL came in at 69, and that is 3 percent better than last year. Here are some select scores, with the comparable 2007 numbers in parentheses: American Customer Satisfaction Index Scores (2nd Quarter, 2008) Google: 86 (78) Yahoo: 77 (79) MSNBC.com: 76 (74) ABCNews.com: 75 (74) MSN: 75 (75) NYTimes.com: 75 (73) Ask: 74 (75 CNN.com: 73 (73) USAToday.com: 73 (72) AOL: 69 (67) The only surprise here is Google’s massive jump. Is it really doing that much of a better job than last year, or is it just that its halo effect keeps growing? (Photo by Bing Ramos). → Read More
The New York Times’ Saul Hansell has now written three articles defending the Associated Press and their attempts to broaden content rights beyond what copyright laws allow. The A.P., in short, doesn’t want anyone quoting more than four words from their articles without paying, and they’ve been threatening to sue (and actually suing) parties who do quote articles. Hansell wrote his first article over the weekend, outlining the A.P.’s strategy of defining rules outside of existing copyright laws for the use of their content. In a second article, he criticized bloggers who reacted negatively to that policy (our response was to ban the A.P. from TechCrunch and our sister sites). Then in a third article today (maybe let sleeping dogs lie?) Hansell comes back once again and suggests that Digg, who is clearly in the A.P.’s crosshairs, is on A.P.’s side in this fight. In a comment to that article, Digg CEO Jay Adelson contradicts the article, saying “We are not supporting A.P.’s position, by any stretch.” It’s not clear if Jay simply didn’t understand the issues in his interview with the NYTimes, or changed his mind later. But this is just too much. The A.P. is so clearly wrong in this situation that the NYTimes’ position looks ludicrous on its face. The fact that a source (Adelson) is retracting statements he made to Hansell suggest somewhat sloppy journalism. And the worst part of all is the fact that the NYTimes is a part owner of the A.P. and sits on their board of directors. This financial conflict of interest was not disclosed in any of Hansell’s articles. To be fair, Hansell is a legendary journalist and I doubt he cares one bit about the conflict one way or the other (in other words, it doesn’t affect his judgment). And the NYTimes is also a direct competitor to the A.P., mitigating the ownership issue. But it’s time for the NYTimes to put this story to bed, or at least start disclosing their interests. If they don’t, they risk appearing nothing more than a mouthpiece for the A.P., not a balanced publication. Update: Saul Hansell responds in the comments: Hey Mike– Since when is reporting two sides of an issue by definition defending one side? The fair use doctrine of copyright law, not to mention the hot news doctrine of New York State common law, is both complex and unsettled. As → Read More
NYTimes.com has launched a limited beta of a personalized news site called MyTimes.com (screenshots via PaidContent), an RSS play that looks more like MyYahoo than it does the recent Newsgator partnerships with MyUSAToday and MyNewsweek. Unlike in those services, it does not appear that users can add sources from outside the recommended feeds to their MyTimes page. If that’s the case then it’s a real shame – I think that the practice of major media companies offering what are effectively branded RSS readers with editorial control over a default OPML file is better than this tame use of RSS. (Update: this may not be the case, but I still don’t care for the format of this service for the reasons below.) PaidContent reports that MyTimes is currently limited to 5,000 users who have already expressed interest but will be opened for public use later. RSS founding father Dave Winer says he wants to do a seminar on how to design interfaces for RSS readers. It’s hard to know for sure how this will work until it’s open for use; but when only a few of the most recent items in a limited number of feeds can be viewed then popular adoption of RSS is gained at the loss of huge functionality. I love RSS and feel really ambivalent about things like this. Yes RSS enables widgets (even MyTimes calls them that) but it can do a whole lot more. Even if the MyUSAToday and MyNewsweek sites are a little clunky and not as pretty, they are really useful for serious reading. The ability to add your own sources is key, impress me with the platform and insight of your community editors. Enabling a river of news means that readers can view items according to what’s most recent across all sources – that’s key because once you’ve selected your sources then the time that individual items appear can become more important than which source they came from. Displaying news like a field of discrete building blocks is a crude way to relate to a just-in-time world. Widgets are great for many things, but don’t tell me to view the whole world’s news through them. Here’s more on Newsgator’s vision for RSS. Isn’t it ironic that the NYTimes is offering a more sterile RSS experience than USAToday? → Read More
The New York Times launched a redesigned website a few minutes ago. Many of the changes are subtle, but they’ve added a few new features which I really appreciate. First, they now have a dedicated area of the site to show video clips. And more importantly, they have a “most popular” area that includes most emailed, most blogged, and most searched articles. I like the directions the Times is going – and I also note that they are now experimenting with linking to blog posts directly from articles. Some of the changes and new features you’ll see are a refreshed look, streamlined navigation, expanded use of video and other multimedia and better ways to see what other readers are looking at, searching for and talking about. How long before they display blog content directly within NYTimes.com, perhaps via blogburst? → Read More
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