Mr. Ba­quet, Tear Down this Wall

The NYT in­no­va­tion re­port

In 2014, The New York Times re­leased an in­ternal in­no­va­tion re­port (since leaked to the public) on how a shifting— in­creas­ingly mo­bile and so­cial— media ecology is de­manding the need for an agile busi­ness model to sup­port their al­ready ex­em­plary foun­da­tions in jour­nalism.¹ The re­struc­turing of their or­ga­ni­za­tion prompts a de­bate on how the typ­i­cally walled-off news­room is ex­pected to in­teract with the com­mer­cial side of busi­ness— ad­ver­tising, pro­mo­tional out­reach, R&D, and au­di­ence ac­qui­si­tion— all the while main­taining the valued in­tegrity of its writing.

Dig­ital-only news

As their re­port shows, many of their younger com­peti­tors are dig­ital-only pub­li­ca­tions— and the sus­tained growth of these new com­pa­nies (Huff­Post, Buz­zFeed, Vice, Vox Media, etc.) has re­in­forced the im­por­tance of un­der­standing and in­cor­po­rating modern tech­nology.

Be­yond the in­cred­ible in­sight the re­port has pro­vided in terms of the in­ternal or­ga­ni­za­tional hi­er­ar­chies— the con­stant whirring of the New York Times' many dif­ferent cogs, it also per­forms a somber eu­logy to print media. But no one at the New York Times seems to be wasting any time in mourning; as a whole, the tone is op­ti­mistic. The call-to-ac­tion en­cour­ages everyone at the com­pany, from every level, to con­sciously ex­plore and com­mu­ni­cate ways in which their rel­a­tively frac­tured busi­ness model— for­merly, a "mo­nopoly on at­ten­tion"— might adapt to the highly-con­nected, dig­ital in­for­ma­tion ecosystem brought about by the In­ternet.²

Death of print news

The Web has de­stroyed print news. If you want to put up an ad in the clas­si­fieds, you're going to open up a browser and go to craigslist.org, or eBay.³ You might sit down at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee on a Sunday and read the fun­nies; but, when was the last time you read the news on a piece of paper? Our ap­petite for in­for­ma­tion is in­sa­tiable, and mo­bile de­vices have catered to that de­sire by giving us cu­rated, up-to-date news at any second— and at vir­tu­ally no cost. Without the over­head of phys­ical re­sources: dis­tri­b­u­tion, paper and ink— dig­ital busi­nesses have nat­u­rally taken over, ac­cel­er­ated by so­cial net­works on­line and in­stant share-ability.

The re­sult is a shat­tering of the media cli­mate as the few cen­tral­ized in­for­ma­tion out­lets bleed out their au­di­ence and staff (if not dis­solving en­tirely). As ad rev­enue streamed from pa­pers to Face­book and Google's du­opoly, we've been swept into a noisy and par­tisan mael­strom of in­for­ma­tion— with little ac­count­ability, or even truth.

What are trust­worthy news sources?

It's no co­in­ci­dence that the cur­rent crisis of "fake news", or mis­in­for­ma­tion, has oc­curred at the peak of ac­tive so­cial media use. In 2017, "two-thirds of Amer­i­cans re­port that they get at least some of their news on so­cial media" ac­cording to a study by Pew Re­search Center.⁴ The in­tro­duc­tion of user-gen­er­ated con­tent, ar­ti­fi­cial users (trolls and bots), al­go­rith­mi­cally-cu­rated news, and the overall abun­dance of in­for­ma­tion hasn't, how­ever, been met with a broader sen­si­bility of shrewd read­er­ship. In­stead, quality jour­nalism— awash in the con­tin­uous out­pouring of dis­parate in­for­ma­tion— is strug­gling to com­mand much at­ten­tion at all.

Tra­di­tional news out­lets like the New York Times have in­deed strug­gled to find cre­ative ways of meeting user-de­mand— at­tempting to sur­vive as a vi­able busi­ness while their work is passed around Face­book feeds like a viral meme. Re­cently, the in­tro­duc­tion of a me­tered pay­wall has pro­vided a means of re­taining the value which their jour­nal­ists pro­vide. How­ever, it's re­in­forced the idea that ac­cess to quality news is not free— while Face­book has washed its hands to the in­flux of links and copy­cats. Un­doubt­edly, it will take in­cred­ible in­no­va­tion— per­haps aided by reg­u­la­tory policy as the re­cent lash­back against Face­book con­tinues— to com­pete with the pow­erful net­works es­tab­lished by so­cial media.

An in­triguing busi­ness model that re­jects out­side pub­lisher ad­ver­tising in favor of in-house media gen­er­a­tion and brand re­in­force­ment is Red Bull Media House. This pro­duc­tion com­pany, along with Vice, Vox Media, and others have in­creas­ingly pro­moted orig­inal con­tent that caters to a dig­ital-first au­di­ence. The full-fledged media ecosys­tems they've es­tab­lished is com­pa­rable to the Net­flix or Ama­zon's "orig­inal se­ries"— pro­viding cre­ative and mem­o­rable doc­u­men­tary news. Ad­di­tion­ally, this pairing of in­for­ma­tion with video or graphics adds value and de­ters any at­tempt at re­pro­duc­tion— or diminu­tion of the orig­inal au­thor­ship.