Media Curmudgeon

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May 12, 2008

Smart NY Times Conversation

I’ve always tried to associate with people who are smarter than I am because it’s the best way to learn anything. Furthermore, one of the reasons I blog is to try to create an open, public dialogue – to create a conversation, which is really what a blog should be. Following is an e-mail conversation among three smart people in response to Roger Black’s guest blog about The New York Times.

To: Roger Black
From: Jesse Kornbluth

I actually thought your piece was -- between the lines -- pointing less to Murdoch than to the Bloomberg model: writer as content producer, who also does radio and TV

For the Times, that's beyond imagining.

Indeed, the utter failure of the recent Page 1 Times blast about military "experts" appearing on news shows struck me as due largely to the absence of a strong TV partnership -- if not the outright failure to own important TV.

From: Paul Atkinson
To: Charles Warner
(Forwarded to Jesse Kornbluth and Roger Black)

The real story there was that Brauchli was as greedy as anyone else - he took $3-5mm of Murdoch's money and said "to hell with the special News Overseers Committee" - he didn't even loop them into his resignation.

From: Roger Black
To: Jesse Kornbluth

What I was getting at is that the Journal staff was acting like babies throughout, and they're supposed to be working for a newspaper devoted to the market economy!

From: Roger Black
To: Jesse Kornbluth

[The Bloomberg Model] would have to be case-by-case, but the [best] newsroom model is blogs. Find the local equivalents of [The Times’] Sewell Chan -- reporters who are tireless and smart even if they don't get out much. Put each in charge of one of a dozen verticals. Let them write for entertainment, currency and connection to what people are actually interested in.

Then, online, hook up something to relate the vertical to the rest of the world, like “Inform” or “DayLife,” and you're off.

The real problem in making the needed changes is the institutional mind-set [t]hat makes everyone stay in their own "industry." But the TV guys are having the same problem. It's like they never heard about that old Harvard Business Review story about the New York Central passenger managers thinking of themselves as "railroad men."

Posted by Charles Warner at May 12, 2008 09:11 AM

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