Two selections from the NYTimes, and maybe to send in @mediaisthriving’s direction: a ‘resilient strategy for [NY] Times despite toll of a recession,’ and this, ‘a site chronicles ways to adapt in the downturn’: “Two editors who were laid off from Condé Nast Portfolio could rage against the recession, but instead they hitched their wagon to the downturn by starting up a Web site, Recessionwire.com,” NYTimes.com reports.
Got a large cup of tea and several biscuits for this one? Good. Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times is answering, impressively comprehensively, NYTimes readers’ questions. First up, the ‘existential question’: just what is the future of print?
“At a recent meeting with the Iraqi journalists’ union, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki made a pledge that would have scandalised the Iraqis’ American counterparts: the government would give plots of land to thousands of journalists, for a nominal price or possibly even free,” the New York Times reports. Full story…
Nielsen Online, a service of The Nielsen Company, today reported a 16 per cent year-on-year increase in unique visitors to the top 10 newspaper Web sites, growing from 34.6 million unique visitors in December 2007 to 40.1 million in December 2008.
NYTimes.com was the number one online newspaper destination in December 2008, with 18.2 million unique visitors. USATODAY.com and washingtonpost.com took the second and third spots, with 11.4 million and 9.5 million unique visitors, respectively. Download PDF release
The New York Times has announced that U2 lead singer Bono is now writing a column for The New York Times and NYTimes.com. A release said:
“Beginning this Sunday, his columns will appear occasionally on The New York Times Op-Ed page and online at nytimes.com/opinion and will cover a broad range of subjects. He will also do a podcast of his first column.”
Bono’s first column here. It starts ‘in a crush in a Dublin pub around New Year’s’. Not everyone is a fan – the Pheonix’s Adam Reilly is not too impressed by the ‘Frank Sinatra homage’:
“Lame topic, overly florid writing, a journalistic conflict of interest….” Reilly writes.
Times’ reporter Nicholas Kristof used Twitter and the NYTimes blog to ask Chinese residents whether they could access the New York Times website.
According to a Times report, China has blocked internet access to the paper’s site.
A report from ContentNext suggests news websites, from independents to newspapers, can turn a profit if they generate more than 200 million monthly page views.
According to the research, a site such as NYTimes.com would need to record 1.3 billion page views a month – this could lead to $300 million in quarterly ad revenues.
The NYTimes reports that as newspapers get smaller in the US, and broadcast news ratings plummit, ‘a new kind of web-based news operation has arisen in several cities, forcing the papers to follow the stories they uncover’.
NYTimes.com has developed a new video player to allow clips to be embedded in more sections of the site.
The player, which uses technology from Brightcove, will make video available on the homepage, individual article pages and on the site’s blogs, a release from the title said. The player also lets users send footage to social networks and bookmarking sites, including Digg, Facebook and LinkedIn.
As part of a video overhaul, the Times’ video library has been redesigned and a regularly updated list of ‘most viewed’ clips now features on the site.
“Demand for high-quality video is on the rise across the web from both our users and our advertisers,” said Nicholas Ascheim, vice president of product management for NYTimes.com, in the release.
“To meet this need, we have upgraded our technology, increased our production values and given video even more prominence across the site.”
According to the release, the Times produces 100 videos a month, while also featuring content from Reuters, CNBC, MSNBC and Bloggingheads.tv.
A look at the practice of hyperlinking content by the mainstream news sites in the US: news organisations are becoming more comfortable linking to competitors, ‘acting in effect like aggregators’.