Can ebooks save the New York Times?
By Paul Biba
From our prolific correspondent, Michael Pastore, comes this article on Epublishers Weekly:
Story Summary:
Print publishing has one foot in the grave and the other foot on a banana peel. Can ebooks — part of the electronic publishing revolution that has often been blamed for print publishing’s troubles — be a significant factor in the paper’s resurgence? … A gruntled author, whose upbeat book about ebooks has been ignored by the Times, explains the causes of newspapers’ demise, and then offers 11 solutions for renewal, including a New York Times-owned ebook reading device: the NYeTBook.
April 26th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
You know what? WHO CARES whether the NYT is saved? It’s just one more news source, one that can ably be replaced by another, if they don’t have the good sense to embrace the evolution taking place in technology and communications.
The EW article suggests the print industry should get, and take, a federal bailout to fix their problems, before it’s too late. I say NO. They can evolve, or not, just like the rest of us, and take the lumps we all have to take.
Suck it up, NYT: Evolve, or Don’t. It really doesn’t matter to anyone except you.
April 26th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Steve: I agree with you 100%
April 27th, 2009 at 8:35 am
You are both wrong. What happens to the NYT does matter. Its news stories are more objective and more indepth than what you get from HuffPo or the Limbaughs of online journalism.
For people like me who hate being chained to their computers and do not read newspapers or catch the news on the computer, and for people also like me who do not watch the idiot box (I’m pleased to say that in 2008 the only TV I watched were the president and vice-president debates), publications like the New York Times and The Economist are vital and important. I can’t imagine what the world would be like if all our news was from unpaid bloggers. It would be like playing telephone as a child, with each iteration becoming more outrageous and no one having the credibility to be established as a primary source for fact.
April 27th, 2009 at 9:02 am
Rich: Unpaid bloggers, HuffPo and Limbaugh aren’t the only sources of news out there, and they aren’t all equally good or bad. NYT may have been one of the better news sources around (and, news flash, they weren’t exactly saints, either), but if they are going to continue to blindly deny the evolution of their own industry, they’re not worth listening to about anything else. They are dinosaurs, and soon, they’ll be mammal fodder.
There are other good news sources out there, many of which are embracing the 21st century and providing timely news and accurate, untainted information… it just takes some searching and effort to find them, you can’t fall back on the old choices any more. Time to move on, get away from that old carcass, before the mammals get you in their sights, too.
April 27th, 2009 at 9:22 am
==State of Play== (the film) and David Rothman’s fine novel ==The Solomon Scandals== (the book, which would make a thrilling movie, I believe) recently reminded me of the value of print journalism.
I do fear for the future of the New York Times; I don’t think that they will accept the bailout, if offered.
Steve, you can help us all out here, and tell us the names of those “good news sources” that are Pulitzer-prize quality, and not using the New York Times’s (or other print publications, which will topple if the New York Times does) stories as the foundation for their articles.
Michael Pastore
50 Benefits of Ebooks
April 27th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
If all you want is to find Pulitzer prize winners… do a Google search.
But the value of the internet is in allowing the user to search for the sources that speak directly to them and their interests, in whatever genre, at whatever level and language they prefer. Therefore, I won’t be doing your research for you… you’ll have to find your news sources for yourself, just like I had to find them for myself.
As for the NYT, they no more deserve a bailout than GM does… they made their bed (or dug their grave, as the case may be), and now they can go lie on/in it.
April 27th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
@Steve: Sorry, I agree with Rich and Michael. You cite the virtues of ‘allowing the user to search for the sources that speak directly to them and their interests, in whatever genre, at whatever level and language they prefer’ – well, there’s another angle to take on that, and that’s balkanization. Retreating into your own little community. At best, insular and only caring about your own interests to the exclusion of important things happening elsewhere; at worst, smug in your certainty and the knowledge that YOUR viewpoint is right – and if anything contradicts that, it must be the product of ideological bias, conspiracy, a cover-up, or at best not worth listening to. I’m already seeing far too much of this for my own comfort.
We as a nation, a society, a world community, need news sources that are a) broadly-based and expose readers to a spectrum of news, topics and settings, not a narrowly-focused view; b) are widely known and recognized; c) are credible and trustworthy, with a track record. (Yes, the NYT has had its lapses, as have other mainstream news organizations, but they also have a decades-long track record of reporting to judge on.)
If it ‘takes some searching and effort to find’ the credible news sources you think we should move to, they’re pretty useless as a standard that everyone knows and can use as a touchstone, wouldn’t you agree?
(I admit, I’m biased here myself; I got my degree in journalism, though I never worked in the field because no one was hiring entry-level science/tech writers when I graduated in 1990. But it frightens me how many people trust and rely on blogs that would have flunked by the standards I was taught for thoroughness, integrity, and neutrality.)
April 28th, 2009 at 8:20 am
@Steve: I don’t want just Pulitzer Prize winners; I want a trustworthy, reliable, objective source for the news that informs my daily decisions. What kind of election would we have had in 2008, for example, if the only sources for news were the partisan blogs. Yes, the NYT has a liberal bias, particularly in its editorial pages, but that bias is less in its news reporting articles than the bias of HuffPo or the Weekly Standard.
I have a neighbor who thinks that if Rush Limbaugh didn’t vouch for it, it can’t be true. Is that the world we want? My sister thinks the Limbaughs and Bushes of the world are all liars and thieves. Is that the world you want?
And who will pay the costs for investigative reporting when there is no longer a NYT or Washington Post or Atlanta Constitution? Do you really think HuffPo would have absorbed the costs — and the necessary time — to conduct a Watergate-type investigation or an Iran-Contra investigation?
And if you look at many of the online “news” sources, all thye are doing is repeating snippets from the NYT, the Post, AP, and other reliable, well-known media sources. They are not journalists, they are condensers and repeaters. What will they have to condense and repeat when the WSJ and the NYT no longer exist? The dreams of HuffPo and Rush?
April 28th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
If you believe a newspaper that cannot even acknowledge the change going on in its own industry is that trustworthy, reliable and objective, that’s up to you. I see their reporting as provincial, suited to the fairly static world of the twentieth century. It does not suit me.
Back in the day, when you had no choice but to get your news locally, single newspapers were adequate for news, and you just hoped the paper you had access to was a good one.
Today, you have the choices of a planet to access. Stop fretting about HuffPo, Rush and such, as if they are the only news sources out there… they are not. Don’t be afraid to look a little further afield… in fact, if you want real information, you cannot depend on one source… you must look further, to get the whole story. I get my share of good and accurate news, and I’ve never visited either of those sites. It just takes some effort on your part to look for the content in as many places as you can find, not to rely on one source (which is demonstrably not perfect) to provide it to you.