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February 18, 2005
The New New York Times?
I paid a visit to the 14th floor of the New York Times today with the Columbia Media Management Association. Media has always been an interesting industry area to me, perhaps since I wrote my first letter to the editor when I was in middle school. (Thank goodness they didn't publish it!) Later, of course, I wrote for the Post-Tribune, and today I read at least five newspapers a day (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and sometimes 6 and 7.)
It was an auspicious day to visit, as the Times this morning announced a $490M all-cash deal to buy about.com, an annoying content website that somehow pops up highly in many google searches, traps users with frames and redirects, and is loaded with so much advertising that it's hard to find the content, if there is any. Alas, I must just be out-of-date, as I still mourn the demise of gopher and the Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index of Computerized Archives.
The Times is the only local newspaper to expand significantly beyond its home market and perhaps the best-recognized newspaper name in the world. Over 90% of most papers' circulation occurs within a one-county radius of the paper's big city, vs. only 50% for the Times. And the Times's 18M unique website users compares to only 700K for the WSJ.
Yet the core business is losing the battle for subscribership in Manhattan and vicinity. With a weakening core in New York City, The Times is forced into substantially more risky businesses where it is currently a weak follower: Television, International, Search (about.com), Local Papers, etc. While it's swell to deliver content to consumers in whatever platform it is desired, expanding into new platforms also carries substantial risk involved in getting into businesses with only low-moderate cost and customer sharing and entrenched competitors. (These being, e.g., Time Warner, the FT, Google, and Gannett.)
It will be interesting to watch the Times's strategy going forward, as the Times attempts to master both broad content and distribution. Edgar Bronfman, Jr., head of Warner Music, came to campus recently to explain how he believes that content and distribution are inherently in conflict, with content wanting to be as broadly distributed as possible and distribution wanting to be exclusive. If I write something, I want everyone to see it, but if I am distributing writings I need something exclusive to draw viewers. The Times is expanding its distribution substantially while continuing to invest in content at a time when other mainstream media are hacking the newsroom and replacing real journalism with talking-heads and their print equivalent--a noble but risky strategy. I tip my hat to the folks in the Times strategy group if they pull it off.
In other news, the Hollywood Reporter writes that Paris Hilton (blog entry) held a big party at Duvet (pictures) a few days ago. I can't believe I missed it.
Posted by adrianjo at February 18, 2005 08:41 PM
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