NYT Publisher Says Not Focusing on Engineering Was A Serious Mistake 148
curtwoodward writes "You'd have a hard time picking just one way the traditional news business stumbled into the Internet era. But America's most important newspaper publisher says one mistake sticks out. In a recent discussion at Harvard, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. of the New York Times said newspapers really messed up by not having enough engineers on hand 'building the tools that we're now using.' Instead, the the news business faces a world where outsiders like Facebook and Twitter control the technology that is distributing their work."
Or maybe those outsiders are just better.
Private entetise controlling speech (Score:1, Interesting)
We have Net Neutrality protecting data transmission, where is our Digital Speech Neutrality?
Re:No, he's wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
I've worked at a major newspaper. Reporters HATE technical people. That's one of the reasons tech reporting so bad... they won't even TALK to a tech person in most cases.
That culture hates (and can be very denigrating) to all people that are not reporters. Just getting an online presence itself very controversial at first.
The fact that most newspapers faltered is not a surprise and is based on their culture. They are going to have to actually embrace people of other skill sets if they can compete at all, and that's a cultural changing going right down to how journalism is taught at journalism schools.
Re:Yeah, they dropped the ball (Score:4, Interesting)
How do you pay for serious investigative journalism, something I think that we are seriously lacking and suffering from, if you can't pay for your journalists?
Traditionally, your newsstand price paid for the ink, paper, and other printing costs while the advertising paid for the content. If I'm paying good money for something I do NOT want to see an ad in it. Double dipping is theft.
The Illinois Times [illinoistimes.com] manages to do investigative reporting, pay writers and cartoonists, pay for syndicated columnists [illinoistimes.com], turn a profit, and still manage to give the paper away for free -- and not just the online edition, the dead tree version is free, too. You can pick up a copy almost anywhere in Springfield. It's wildly popular because 1) it's good an 2) it's free. Meanwhile, the almost useless State Journal-Register is laying off all its workers (their cartoonist now works for the Illinois Times and they have no in-house cartoonist) and they're on the verge of bankruptcy. [illinoistimes.com]
Their problem is the same as every other newspaper's problem -- GREED. They're asking far more for a copy than what one is worth.
They do not deserve your pity, their wounds were self-inflicted.