The Corner -
GOODBYE, TIMES [KJL]
The latest issue of Business Week features a very interesting cover story on The New York Times. The biggest news is that the Times is in a financial downturn. There are a variety of factors at play, but the move away from MSM and toward Internet-based news sources is clearly playing a role.
That shift is not entirely driven by ideological issues, but disaffection with the paper’s liberal bias is helping to push erstwhile subscribers toward alternative outlets on the Web. There are other sources of trouble. The Times is now geared toward a national readership among the scattered and largely liberal educated elite.
That means the paper lacks the critical mass in any one location–even New York City–to allow for targeted local advertising. The Times gained a lot of subscribers when it went national, but it also lost a huge number of subscribers in New York City.
Net readership is still up, but the hit in NYC was a big one, and clearly cut into ad revenues. Business Week doesn’t say so, but the rise of more conservative local New York City papers like The New York Sun and The New York Post has probably hurt the Times a lot. These papers may be less expensive, but it seems likely that the NYT’s politics has also pushed some subscribers over to more conservative local challengers. So liberal bias may figure into the NYT’s financial troubles even more than Business Week says. The big decision facing the Times is whether to start charging subscription fees for Internet access. That would mean a huge exodus of readers, and a large drop in Internet ad revenues. Yet higher subscription income could more than make up for lost ad revenue.
Even given what the Times has become under Pinch Sulzberger, it pains me to say that I wish the paper ill. The Times offers detailed and high quality reporting–especially on developments outside the U.S.–that no other paper can match. But I do wish The New York Times ill. As I see it, NYT has discredited itself in lasting fashion. Jayson Blair is the least of it.
I read the paper with far more suspicion now than I did even a few years ago, and I read it with far more suspicion then than a few years before that. I hope the Times decides to insist on paid subscriptions from online readers. That may give a temporary boost to the paper’s bottom line, but it will vastly contract readership.
In the long run, lost readership will damage the paper’s prestige, limit its cultural reach, and probably cut into profitability. It’s gratifying to see the Times forced to choose between long term health and influence and short-term profits. As I say, it’s a shame to want to see misfortune befall a paper that still upholds an unmatched standard of quality in certain kinds of news coverage. Yet The New York Times has discredited itself. This paper has destroyed our ability to trust it, even when it does what it does best. For that, The New York Times deserves to suffer. |
