NYT Publisher Says Not Focusing on Engineering Was A Serious Mistake

Posted by Unknown on Wednesday September 18, 2013 @12:53AM from the programmers-make-the-world-go-round dept.

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.

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Re:No, he's wrong by MickyTheIdiot · 2013-09-18 01:16 · 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.