The Future of The New York Times

Some arguments in favour of NYTimes.com 

The online version of The New York Times will continually gain more importance in contrast to the printed version.

1) The New York Times Company is going to focus its business efforts on its online presence.

• The NYT Company consists of many different branches (see diagram beneath) of which the printed version is only a comparatively small one.

• All other newspapers of the NYT Company also have an online version (The International Herald Tribune; The Boston Globe) which shows the same tendency as for The New York Times

• There are offers which are only available online (About.com; ConsumerSearch.com) 

2) Going online created new opportunities and improvements for the publishers of The New York Times, compared to the 

     printed newspaper

• Reaching a broader audience world-wide

• Present breaking news in a more timely manner as the news are constantly updated 

• Provide the reader with interactive features: blogs, reader comments, videos, RSS feeds,  slide shows etc.

• The reader can use search engines and archives to search articles by topic, person, keyword, etc. also for past issues

• Using hypertext for the reader to follow links to get further information

• Easy navigation for the reader to select his/her favourite section by a single click according to the slogan of the homepage:"All the news that's fit to click" (For further information on the slogan click here)                                       

   

• The online edition can offer a wider range of information as there is no limitation of space

 3) The fees for The New York Times' web archive have been abolished - now every article from present and past

       issues can be accessed for free

• Since september 2007 the feature formally called TimesSelect does not exist anymore > the access toThe New York Times archive and to articles by well-known authors is free

• More than 16 Million articles from The New York Times dating back to 1851 are now available free of charge

4) Within the next five years, there will be technical developments to read online newspapers more conveniently

• The cost for Internet services like WLAN will decrease continually 
   
• PDA's like Blackberry or Palm will further develop and make the reading of online newspapers possible at any time and place

• The New York Times Company employs a group of specialists to develop strategies and technical devices for the online future of the newspaper

The Caucus 2008 - an example

 

The Caucuses of the Presidential Elections of America in 2008 illustrate the superiority of online to printed newspaper. This will be shown on the basis of the previously outlined arguments.

 

 

1) More information online than in newspaper

 

According to the Bivings Group report on online newspapers, the online version of the newspapers have more daily visitors (NYTimes.com: approx.1,400,000) than they sell copies of the newspaper each day (The New York Times: approx. 1,370,350) which displays in the website being more informative than the newspaper. The New York Times Company focuses its effort on the website of the newspaper (Most popular online newspaper, see Bivings Group). This shows the growing interest of the Company for their online presence.

 

 

2) Looking at "The Caucus - The New York Times Politics Blog" 

 

The Caucus Blog on NYTimes.com shows the new opportunities and improvements of presenting news on the internet. The blog is easily accessible all over the world at any time and is constantly updated with the latest news. That means that the authors of the articles are no longer bound to wait for their articles to be printed in the next issue of the newspaper but can update the news as soon as they are composed. This offers a great improvement for the readers as they are always on top of the news. 

 

The Caucus Blog makes use of many different interactive features which enable the blog to respond more specifically to the reader's demands. For example:

 

 

• The Blog itself

 

          The reader will see the latest news on top, can comment on the articles and thus discuss the topic further into detail with other interested readers.

 

 

 

• Videos

 

 

 

• RSS feeds
   

 

 

• Slide shows 

 

 

• The Election Guide 2008
   
  The Election Guide 2008 offers the reader the opportunity to review results, candidates profiles or the topics.
   
   
   
   

 Another two important features to online journalism are:

 

• Search engines or archives

 

 

 

• Hypertext

 

 

 

All these features enable the reader to navigate more easily to the topics he or she is interested in ("All the news that's fit to click"). Additionally, there are no spacial limitations to the Caucus Blog thus it can expand its information to a large extent and it can go further into detail as a printed newspaper.

 

 

3) The Caucus Blog is free

 

Similar to all of NYTimes.com, the Caucus Blog is also free for everybody with access to the internet. The search engines allow the reader to access all of the information yet updated on the blog, he or she can use the interactive features listed above and all for free. This is a great advantage to the printed newspapers because in order to keep all the news in newspapers one has to buy every issue which would be expensive and labourious.

 

4) The Caucus Blog of prospective elections

 

In the future, the Caucus Blog of prospective elections will be even more easily accessible, in terms of "anytime, anyplace", and more economical than today due to pronounced technical developments such as decreasing internet costs and new forms of PDA'S.

 

 

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