"Why the success of the NYT may be bad news for journalism"

The food section is to the Times what the swimsuit issue used to be for SI. There are many people, my daughter and wife being two, who subscribe just for that.

 

And they keep last year's copy in the nightstand?

 

My library just added a second subscription, and has a digital subscription thanks to our consortium.

Meanwhile, some libraries in Florida are forbidden from adding a digital subscription. And a guy who just returned here from Florida said the library he used to go to there (near Fort Myers) had to make people give an ID to read the NYT because they'd take it and throw it away so no one could read #FakeNews.

So we're equaling it out.

 

Food porn.

 

I found the part about the Times podcast business interesting. Also, the guy is a former Buzzfeed News editor-in-chief. He has spent half of his career in online news sites.

 

Mary McNamara, an LA Times columnist, responds.

Column: What's wrong with the New York Times? Don't ask its new media critic

 

I think the point is that everyone said the new era would herald in this wonderful age of local journalism in which it would actually be those local city meetings that were more important than the White House -- because there are 500 people covering the president and we're the only ones covering the Bumfuck Planning Commission!
(Or to put it in sports terms, an NFL team has eight beat writers, but we're the only ones covering Bumfuck Community College, so people will turn to us for news they can't get anywhere else! Yay!)

But in reality, the opposite has happened. Anyone who works at a digitally focused outlet knows that local sports don't bring clicks or subscriptions and, if anything, outlets are investing more in that NFL team that already has eight people covering it.
Likewise, the New York Times has prospered by getting millions of people to hate-read stories about Trump despite the fact that they can read that a million other places, and no one is subscribing to their local newspaper to learn about Bumfuck's local city council race.

The Times is spending money like crazy while even large and mid-sized cities that once had robust local news desks now have one or two fresh-out-of-college kids who spend half their time aggregating trend stories.

 

Also - many public and private entities are using these same digital tools to tell their own stories. Put the city council meeting up on a web feed, digitize mug shots, hire your own people to cover the team on the team website. Cut out the middle-person and own your own story.

The old saying never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrell doesn't apply anymore. Anyone can have a website.