New York Times Co. posts $74.5m loss

THE New York Times Co. reported a quarterly net loss of $74.5 million on Tuesday, a day after its flagship newspaper scooped up five Pulitzer prizes, the highest awards in US journalism.
Times Co. shares plunged 15.56 percent to $4.94 on Wall Street as the company, which also owns The Boston Globe, International Herald Tribune and other papers, reported a drop in advertising revenue of nearly 30 percent.
Revenue for the Times Co. declined 18.6 percent to $609 million in the first quarter from $747.9 million in the same quarter last year.
The Times Co., which posted a net loss of $335,000 in the first quarter of 2008, said advertising revenue at its publishing segment dropped 28.4 percent in the first three months of 2009, including an eight percent decline in online advertising revenue at its News Media Group.
The New England Media Group, which includes the Boston Globe and Boston.com, saw a 31.4 percent decline in advertising revenue.
Times Co. president and chief executive Janet Robinson said advertising revenue fell across the board in the first quarter and the outlook for the current quarter was equally poor.
"Like many companies across America and in our industry, the challenges we face intensified in the first quarter," Robinson said in a statement. "The effect of the global economic downturn, coupled with the secular changes affecting newspapers, resulted in significant declines in revenues.
"Advertisers pulled back on print placements in all categories -- national, retail and especially classified," she said. "Digital revenues also declined, although modestly, as a result of the weakening economy. Circulation revenue increased slightly as we benefited from price increases at our newspapers."
Robinson said cost-cutting moves should improve the balance sheet for the remainder of the year.
"This quarter our operating costs declined 9.5 percent," she said. "This year we plan to save more than $330 million in operating expenses."
On prospects for the current quarter, Robinson said: "At this time, and it is early in the quarter, we believe the rate of decline in ad revenues in the second quarter will be similar to that of the first. In time, however, we believe that the economy will grow and the advertising market will improve."
Earlier this month, the Times threatened to shut down the Boston Globe, which was purchased by the Times Co. for $1.1 billion in 1993, unless unions at the daily agreed to pay cuts and other cost-saving measures.
The Times Co. also recently completed a sale-leaseback deal for part of its Manhattan headquarters in a move aimed at raising cash to pay down its debt and received a $250-million loan from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim.
The Times is also seeking a buyer for its 17.75 percent stake in New England Sports Ventures, which includes the Boston Red Sox baseball team and their iconic stadium, Fenway Park.
Like other US newspapers, the Times has been grappling with a steep drop in print advertising revenue, steadily declining circulation and the migration of readers to free news online.

Source: NYT.com

Is The Legacy Of 'The New York Times' In Trouble?

THE New York Times is the most important newspaper in the country and, maybe, the world. It is, writes Mark Bowden in this month's Vanity Fair, the flagship of serious journalism.
No newspaper has won so many prizes or produces such consistently outstanding work. No other journalism Web site comes near its excellence — or its readership. And yet, many of its writers, readers and staunchest supporters wonder if it can survive.
Protecting the Times legacy is a legacy himself — Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. — the fifth in his family to preside as publisher, and the man who, Bowden says, has steered his inheritance into a ditch.

Source: npr.org

IHT Joins Forces with the NYT on the Web and Reveals New-Look Newspaper

The two high-quality news organizations combine to launch a new global news, business, sports and style Web site
Iconic world newspaper gets a bold redesign to enhance its international personality and broaden its contemporary appeal

PARIS: The International Herald Tribune (IHT), the global edition of The New York Times, today launched two major product innovations for its worldwide audience of digital and newspaper readers.
A new online Global Edition at global.nytimes.com combines the international voice of the IHT with the worldwide breadth of reporting of The Times and the digital expertise of NYTimes.com. It is edited in New York, Paris and Hong Kong to provide users with a 24/7 flow of geopolitical, business (with Reuters), sports and style, news and commentary from a distinctly global perspective.
Starting today, IHT.com users are automatically redirected to global.nytimes.com and users of NYTimes.com can choose to set the Global Edition as their home page. They can also sign up for a new email service: Today’s Headlines Global Edition, published twice daily for European and Asian morning delivery.
Simultaneously, the IHT unveiled a fresh new look for its newspaper. The result of a year-long collaboration with the award-winning newspaper design team at The New York Times, the front-to-back redesign gives more definition to the 122-year-old paper’s journalistic strengths and emphasizes its international personality.
Stephen Dunbar-Johnson, publisher of the IHT, said: “Together with The Times, we are creating a powerhouse for high quality global news – it is thanks to closer integration with New York that has made the dynamic new Global Edition online a round-the-clock reality, and it is thanks to this that we have such a clear and sparkling new design for our newspaper. Today the IHT is demonstrating its steadfast commitment to steering its international readers through the momentous events of a fast-changing world, serving readers and advertisers with creativity and vision.”
Clearer headings, improved page navigation, more anchored positions, better designed briefs columns and pointers to Web articles, as well as greater emphasis on photography all serve to make the new-look IHT newspaper easier to navigate, more visually arresting and helpful in directing readers to additional content at global.nytimes.com. Typographically, the IHT has also introduced a cleaner nameplate that gives “international” more prominence and a new Cheltenham typeface to lend contrast and openness throughout.
Martin Gottlieb, editor, global edition said ”Redesigning the newspaper and reconfiguring our global online presence at the same time created significant opportunities for us journalistically: Working together with The New York Times, we have been able to look at the overall balance and direction of our coverage afresh. By consolidating Web operations and improving design processes, we are freeing up editorial energies to focus on delivering the accurate reporting, thought-provoking writing and sharp analysis that our international readers need now more than ever.”
In the new design, the IHT’s Business section which is produced in collaboration with Reuters, is given added prominence by being anchored at the back of the newspaper Monday through Friday, creating a new business-oriented environment that showcases the popular Breaking Views feature and columns by authoritative, analytical writers like Andrew Ross Sorkin and Floyd Norris. For the weekend edition, in response to reader feedback, a new section called Weekend Arts full of interviews, reviews and lifestyle reporting draws together the prized arts coverage of The Times with distinguished IHT voices, such as art critic Souren Melikian, to create a stimulating weekend read.
Jean Christophe Demarta, international advertising director for The New York Times Media Group, said: “The new online Global Edition and the new-look newspaper have generated a wealth of new opportunities for advertisers looking to reach our influential, international audience. From a range of advanced user targeting options on global.nytimes.com to new larger premium advertising positions on the superbly designed front and back pages of the IHT – this double launch really is fantastic news for The New York Times Media Group’s international advertisers.”

About the International Herald Tribune (global.nytimes.com)
The International Herald Tribune (IHT) is the premier international newspaper for opinion leaders and decision-makers around the globe. It combines the extensive resources of its own correspondents with those of The New York Times, is printed at 35 sites throughout the world and is for sale in more than 180 countries. Based in Paris since 1887, the IHT is owned by The New York Times Company. For more information about the IHT visit ihtinfo.com

About The New York Times Media Group
The New York Times Media Group includes The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, NYTimes.com and global.nytimes.com and WQXR-FM. The group’s global advertising sales network is headquartered in New York with regional offices in London, Paris, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo.

About The New York Times Company
The New York Times Company, a leading media company with 2008 revenues of $2.9 billion, includes The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe, 16 other daily newspapers, WQXR-FM and more than 50 Web sites, including NYTimes.com, Boston.com and About.com. The Company’s core purpose is to enhance society by creating, collecting and distributing high-quality news, information and entertainment.

Source: IHT

The New York Times Slaps Another Web Wrist

JUST in case any of you Web publishers haven’t picked up on it yet: The New York Times (NYT) would like you to stop using the stuff it pays to produce.
The Times is still struggling to figure out how to adapt its business model to the Web era. But it seems to have have embarked on a campaign against after sites that lift too much of its content–a strategy that chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. alluded to in a speech last week.

The Times has already had reached out to aggregators Newser, the Huffington Post and Silicon Alley Insider to complain about various incidents. In the case of Newser, it sent a boilerplate letter threatening legal action.
The latest example: Apartment Therapy, a New York-based design/consumption blog network, says the paper has sent it a takedown notice, citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, demanding that the site remove “all the pictures we’ve blogged from them in 2009.”
In a post, co-founder Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan complains that the Times doesn’t understand that his sites reprint the paper’s photos because they think they’re great.
“We’ll fully admit to loving their pictures, but we’ve been very conscious to never take too much from them, only blogging a visual “taste” of an article and then pushing readers to get the rest on their site. In other words, our editorial policy has been to quote, not appropriate, just like we were all taught in high school.”
Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis declined to comment.
I can already hear the blogosphere getting ready to denounce the paper for “not getting” the “culture” of the Web, where everybody reposts everyone else’s work, and everyone in the “link-based economy” benefits. But like the Newser incident earlier this year, this one seems pretty clear: The paper doesn’t want other people–or at least commercial sites–using its photos without permission.

Source: mediamemo.allthingsd.com

For The New York Times, the digital future is now

BY now, just about everyone who follows the media industry has heard of the deep fiscal troubles of The New York Times. But even as the paper does its best for all the news that's fit for newsprint, it is also conducting experiments aimed at moving itself into the forefront of digital journalism.
At the Emerging Technologies conference (ETech) on Tuesday, Nick Bilton, the design integration editor and user interface specialist at the Times' research and development lab, spoke about "sensors, smart content, and the future of news," essentially a recap of some of the most forward-thinking projects coming from the tech-savvy minds at the paper of record.
Bilton explained that the Times' R&D lab is divided into three main subject areas: emerging platforms, analytics, and core R&D. As a member of the latter team, Bilton said he and four colleagues are devoting their time to researching new technologies that are 5 to 10 years out, particularly at systems involving innovative digital advertising.
Among the projects he talked about, one done in conjunction with software maker Adobe Systems seemed particularly appropriate in a world where everyone has a different size display and uses windows of infinitely varied sizes within their browsers. Bilton explained that the project is aimed at automatically resizing and reformatting data onscreen for whatever sized window in which the user is reading the Times, or its sister publication, the International Herald Tribune.
"When I resize the screen, it re-lays out and reformats the (data)," Bilton said. "It's a really unique way to resize and reformat data for different sized displays.
And he said that the Times' R&D lab is also looking intently at touch-screen devices in an attempt to best understand how usage of such technology impacts how readers experience the news.
Another innovative concept he talked about is what he called "smart content," a system that would keep track of what users have read digitally across all devices. So, under this system, for example, if a reader has looked at a story on their computer and then loads the Times on their iPhone, that story would be grayed out on the assumption that the reader wants to be presented only with the most meaningful data.
Bilton then talked about a digital take on the traditional street newspaper box, those banal metal containers which take your quarters and (usually) give you a copy of the paper. In the lab, the Times is experimenting with a machine, called "CustomTimes," that looks like a newspaper box with a computer monitor on it. The idea is that those who find the boxes--most likely in controlled indoor settings so that they aren't stolen--will be able to peruse Times content in the manner that best suits their needs, allowing them to print the stories they want at the touch of a few buttons.
And in a nod to the fact that newspaper printing deadlines often force publications like the Times to close their earliest editions before results from things like elections or sporting events are known, the paper is also experimenting with a system in which users reading stories with incomplete results can send text messages and have final tallies sent to their mobile devices.
Similarly, Bilton said the paper is trying out a semacode system in which users with cell phone cameras can take pictures of the special, digital codes embedded in, say, movie advertisements and their phones could auto-load trailers for the film. The same would be true of any kind of video content the Times might offer, including its latest video stories, all of which could be available to users with mobile phones with cameras.
And, leveraging mobile phones with built-in GPS, the Times is also thinking about serving up localized content to users, Bilton said, as well as technology that could determine that if a user travels between cell towers at high speeds--likely because they're in a car--stories could be served up in an audio format.
Another interesting system Bilton talked about was one that could integrates Times' content in readers' homes, and in particular, on their Internet-connected TVs. He explained that the Times may offer APIs and that an example of how they could be used would be to auto-detect how far a reader is from their TV. And depending on the distance, the system could automatically change the layout of the content to match the distance and the optimal size of text.
To be sure, much of these ideas are quite a ways off, but some might be in the near future. And for the Times, this is definitely an important time to be taking the lead on digital innovation given that the paper is in serious financial shape and there's been talk about it shutting down its print edition.
Bilton seemed to say that the end of printed newspapers was nowhere near, and that no matter what technology comes along, there will always be a printed edition of the Times. But that may be wishful thinking. Still, regardless of whether you can still pick up an actual paper New York Times or not, there is little doubt that digital is the direction that will dominate in the future. And it's fitting, and crucial, that the journalistic institution that just about everyone else looks to for leadership takes the lead in moving the profession forward.

Source: cnet news

Why the New York Times Won't Cease Printing

THE end of the world is nigh! Or the end of the print edition of the NYT, anyway, at least according to Michael Hirschorn, in a piece which has been generally well-received by a blogosphere. For me, however, the article makes very little sense: Hirschorn seems to think that given a choice between defaulting on debt payments and stopping its print presses, the Sulzbergers might choose the latter. But they wouldn't: for one thing that's not a decision the NYT's lenders would actually want, and for another thing the New York Times Company has any number of assets it could sell off, especially in Boston, before taking such a drastic move.
Hirschorn also seems to think that the newspaper might soon be up for sale, if it isn't already, and reels off a familiar list of potential buyers: Geffen, Bloomberg, Slim, Murdoch, Google, Microsoft, CBS. But even they can't save the print edition, he says:
At some point soon--sooner than most of us think--the print edition, and with it The Times as we know it, will no longer exist. And it will likely have plenty of company.
The second part is right: many smaller newspapers will close their print editions, which have lost the classified-advertising bread-and-butter revenue stream upon which they've historically relied.
But the New York Times is not a small newspaper. It has an enormous display-advertisement inventory, and sells most of it at high rates. It's also incredibly well placed to go national, as smaller papers close, and become a replacement for people who've lost their local paper and who shudder at the prospect of ever reading USA Today.
Hirschorn, by contrast, is thinking small: he calls the Huffington Post "the prototype for the future of journalism", and singles out the NYT's DealBook blog as "a cash cow for The Times". I'm not sure what Hirschorn's idea of a cash cow is, but that characterization just looks strange coming, as it does, in the wake of Hirschorn's easy dismissal of the extremely-lucrative T Magazine as "lifestyle fluff". I can assure Hirschorn that DealBook's email ads make a lot less money than T's luxury gloss.
And then, to top it all off, there's this:
As of December, its stock had fallen so far that the entire company could theoretically be had for about $1 billion. The former Times executive editor Abe Rosenthal often said he couldn't imagine a world without The Times. Perhaps we should start.
Er, no. The NYT has two classes of stock, as Hirschorn knows full well: the secondary-market price of the non-voting stock can't simply be extrapolated to get the amount that someone would need to pay for voting control. And in any case, $1 billion is still a lot of money. To put that number in perspective, over the past four quarters, the New York Times Company has lost about $30 million. I think it's pretty safe to say that the NYT is going to continue to exist in its present form for quite a long time yet.

Source: Portfolio.com