NY Times owner - Print version irrelevant or gone in 5 years

[Bob Russell]

Arthur Sulzberger is the owner and chairman of the New York Times. And he has now shocked us all by telling an Israeli newspaper "I really don't know whether we'll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don't care either."

Let me repeat that so you don't miss the magnitude of that statement! "I really don't know whether we'll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don't care either."

Update: Here's a link to what seems to be the original newspaper article.

Sulzberger says the site development costs for the Internet are nothing compared to the huge print investment costs. Furthermore, he said, "...we live in the Internet world..." indicating that the paper is going to have to learn to survive there. It's the future, and he realizes it.

For fans of e-readers this is especially exciting news. It would seem to accelerate the race for e-reader devices and content systems that can adequately collect and present daily and weekly publications. Clearly, such delivery mechanisms are in their infancy, but with so much at stake so soon, there will surely be a lot of activity and technological advances.

We might find that UMPCs and e-ink both gain a lot more traction as this newspaper revolution begins.

From UPI, via a tip from Pride of Lions. Thanks!

[TheMooch]

Guaranteed. The "Grey Lady" moving to a pure digital format would do WONDERS for the e-ink industry, but there are some pitfalls there.

PROS:
- "Tree-huggers" will be overjoyed. (For obvious reasons)
- MUCH wider distribution, ability to extend readership toa younger demographic.

CONS:
- Guaranteed not to be free. Freedom of the press does not mean Press output is free.
- DRM issues will be even bigger and noisier than ever before.
- Ads take on a whole new meaning
- Just IMAGINE the licensing nightmare of electroniclly distributing the comic section!

Unkowns:
- Supported formats? Always a favorite arguement


Let the flaming begin.....


...and before anyone can attempt hammering me on the "tree-hugger" bit, it is meant as a jesting generalization..I drive a hybrid myself...I get it.....

[NatCh]

I'm not sure I'd put making the tree-huggers happy in the "pros" list, just out of orneriness, you understand.

I don't know that DRM would be in as much of an issue as you might think. Consider, there's no DRM on the Times' current site, a lot of their raison d'être is to get themselves quoted, and finally, why bother aggressively protecting something that's only perceived as being 'good' for a single day in the first place?

Just my thoughts.

[TheMooch]

True, there's no DRM now, but then they're not using the electronic version as a primary form of revenue generation. If the electronic form becomes their main means of distrbution then they're going to want to protect it and force people to subscribe.

They gotta make money somehow.

[RWood]

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has always been a pay to view articles site. They give away a few headlines for free but that is all.

Also, the NYC papers have a higher than national average of street sales and its kinda hard to hold on to a subway strap with one hand and use a reader with the other.

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by TheMooch

They gotta make money somehow.

The primary revenue stream for a newspaper has pretty much always been advertising -- and the more folks who see the ads, the more you can charge for them. Limiting access doesn't make much sense from that perspective.

[ath]

Originally Posted by TheMooch

CONS:
- Guaranteed not to be free. Freedom of the press does not mean Press output is free.
- DRM issues will be even bigger and noisier than ever before.
- Ads take on a whole new meaning
- Just IMAGINE the licensing nightmare of electroniclly distributing the comic section!

... not to mention the question of referenceability. It's always possible to go back to a certain issue of N.Y.Times and check what it contained ... but a newspaper published on the web? Who archives it?

One of the UNKNOWNS is that a no-paper Times won't happen until they are prepared to take on legal issues. What do you do with the 'freedom of the press' if there is no press? No, it's not a joke: some rights and freedoms related to publishing are presently connected with *printed* material -- in some countries more than in others.

Also, the duty of most national libraries to collect all national material that appears in print ... will also be in for a period of transition.

Not sure yet if the balance of all this ends up in the black.

[rlauzon]

Originally Posted by TheMooch

- Guaranteed not to be free. Freedom of the press does not mean Press output is free.

The last time I looked into this, the cost model of newspapers was:
1. The cost of the actual printing of the paper and the distribution of the physical paper is paid by the price you pay for the paper.
2. The costs of the content is paid by the advertising in the newspaper.

With an eNewspaper, cost #1 goes away (well, goes so low that it's not noticable). So they will have to figure out a way to take care of #2.

+ An eNnewspaper with no ads, that we have to pay for? That would have value. I've seen speciality magazines that were funded completely by subscriptions.
+ An eNnewspaper with ads, that is cost free? Basically what we have today.
+ Something else?

Originally Posted by TheMooch

- DRM issues will be even bigger and noisier than ever before.

I don't see this. All the newspapers on the web today don't do anything to "protect" their articles. News articles lose their value very quickly, so there's no value in "protecting" them.

(Note that I use "protect" since it's already been admitted that DRM is not about protecting content, but about locking users into a device/service.)

Originally Posted by TheMooch

- Just IMAGINE the licensing nightmare of electroniclly distributing the comic section!

And what comic in the newspapers DOESN'T appear on the web for free today?

I used to have a a small program that would go out to the various comic sites, suck down the comics you wanted to see, and put them in one HTML page for your convienence.

[rlauzon]

Originally Posted by TheMooch

True, there's no DRM now, but then they're not using the electronic version as a primary form of revenue generation. If the electronic form becomes their main means of distrbution then they're going to want to protect it and force people to subscribe.

They gotta make money somehow.

I thought that the Times let you see today's articles for free, but charged for access to the past articles. (It's been a while since I've gone to the Times online.)

But even in that case, they aren't putting DRM on the past articles. They are simply charging for the service to search and display past articles.

[Leaping Gnome]

Very unrealistic. I bet there will still be paper NYT in 15 years, much less 5.

I watched Back to the Future the other day, the trilogy was being shown on one of the premium networks. Remember when they go into the future and there are flying cars, Mr. Fusion, hoverboards, all kinds of crazy stuff? This movie was made in 1985 and they went into the future 30 years - 2015. It is now 2007 and it is comical to watch this movie and see what people imagined we would have in 8 years.

[NatCh]

Hey, man, that movie is prophetic! That stuff will happen! I've already got a pre-order in on one of those hover-board (it's amazing what you can find on e-bay!)

Yes, I am joking.

I love to look back at those "future vision" things, myself. Remember the "____ Of Tomorrow" (fill in the blank: house, car, whatever) that Looney Tunes used to do? Those were awesome, and I bet they'd be even funnier now that most of it hasn't even come close to happening.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Leaping Gnome

Very unrealistic. I bet there will still be paper NYT in 15 years, much less 5.

Maybe so... but as eNewspapers will undoubtedly take the market over, the paper versions of the NYT will probably be quick-printed versions of select articles/sections, as opposed to entire printed editions. In fact, I expect the future print version to either be a prepackaged abbreviated summary of the news (see web site for further details), or printed from a kiosk that allows you to select your articles or sections on-the-go... a sort of deli-newspaper, printed to order from a menu of choices.

At any rate, there will certainly be fewer printed editions than e-editions read on a daily basis. The article states that there are already about 40% more NYT e-news readers than NYT print readers today, and I don't see that trend reversing. In fact, more compelling e-content could speed up the process immeasurably.

[RWood]

Printed materials are better suited to evergreen material -- stuff that is good to read today or next month or next year. The warm wonderful story of a boy and his dog will not age as a report about a fire in the 400 block of some street will age.

Features are a critical part of the make-up of most papers. Already the Washington Post has dropped a lot of the fnancial reporting on "closing prices" for all but the largest stocks as it is useless information by the time the paper reaches you. Comics are nice (I like comics) but the Post prints them in b+w on weekdays and Saturday (except Dilbert on Mondays is in color) and I can view a lot of them on-line in color.

The on-demand, as-requested aspect of the future information age is already with us. There are many portals (Yahoo and Google to name two) that allow us to select what we want to see. If I favor NASCAR reporting over NFL, no problem. If I want to eliminate all news about golf, it is as easy as clicking a box.

Many of the great (and former great) newspapers in the US have run at a loss. For many years they were supported by the television and radio stations that were owned by the same company. Here in the Washington, DC area there was a grand old paper called the "Washington Evening Star". After the FCC forced the sale of the associated TV station (channel 7 if you are counting) the paper slid downhill very fast. The Post managed to trade stations (it once owned channel 9) and maintain the revenue stream and its ownership of "Newsweek" also added to earnings. Being the main paper in town I understand that it does now earn a profit. The other main paper (aside from the free distribution types like the "Washington Examiner"), the "Washington Times" has lost money every year it has been around (25.)

Enjoy them while you have them, they won't be here much longer.