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How is The New York Times Really Doing? (om.co)
Wired magazine did a profile on The New York Times in its this month's issue. Talking about the paper's transition from print to more digital-focus than ever, author Gabriel Snyder wrote, "It's to transform the Times' digital subscriptions into the main engine of a billion-dollar business, one that could pay to put reporters on the ground in 174 countries even if (OK, when) the printing presses stop forever." Veteran journalist Om Malik analyzes the numbers: -> The company reported revenue of nearly $1.6 billion in 2016 -- remarkably consistent with prior years.
-> Print advertising revenue dipped by $70 million year-over-year to $327 million in 2016.
-> Digital advertising revenue, while a meaningful portion of the Times' revenue, did not grow enough to offset vanishing print ad dollars.
-> Total digital ad revenue in 2016 was $206 million, up only 6% from the prior year.
-> The key revenue driver for the New York Times has been its digital subscription business, which added more than half a million paid subscribers in 2016. Thanks in part to interest around the presidential election, the newspaper added 276,000 new digital subscribers in Q4, the single largest quarterly increase since 2011 (the year the pay model was launched).
The Times' digital success is hinged upon two major drivers: affiliate revenues from services like the Wirecutter and digital subscriptions. Advertising might be a good short term bandaid, but the company needs to focus on how to evolve away from it even more aggressively. The Times needs to simplify their sign-up experience and make it easier for people to pay for the subscriptions. As of now, it is like the sound you hear when scratching your nails on a piece of glass.
-> Print advertising revenue dipped by $70 million year-over-year to $327 million in 2016.
-> Digital advertising revenue, while a meaningful portion of the Times' revenue, did not grow enough to offset vanishing print ad dollars.
-> Total digital ad revenue in 2016 was $206 million, up only 6% from the prior year.
-> The key revenue driver for the New York Times has been its digital subscription business, which added more than half a million paid subscribers in 2016. Thanks in part to interest around the presidential election, the newspaper added 276,000 new digital subscribers in Q4, the single largest quarterly increase since 2011 (the year the pay model was launched).
The Times' digital success is hinged upon two major drivers: affiliate revenues from services like the Wirecutter and digital subscriptions. Advertising might be a good short term bandaid, but the company needs to focus on how to evolve away from it even more aggressively. The Times needs to simplify their sign-up experience and make it easier for people to pay for the subscriptions. As of now, it is like the sound you hear when scratching your nails on a piece of glass.
New York Times reports FAKE NEWS! Terrible.
@donaldjtrump
Isn't this sort of thing just kowtowing to Trumps use of "failing" every time he mentions the New York Times in tweets or press conferences? We all know why he does that - spread enough misinformation about a companies situation and eventually enough people get spooked to make it true. The numbers don't show a failing company, they merely show a transitional one.
When I saw the headline, my first thought was that slashdot had picked up the story about the major newspapers buying fake clicks from Chinese bots to increase their page rank and advertising revenue.
See here and here (or here).
See that "Preview" button?
They've got to get over their hatred of Trump before they can succeed. Even anti-Trump people want to hear about something else once in a while.
NYT does not strike me to be a failing business. At least NYT does not have to resort to stiffing contractors like Trump to turn a profit.
Really, I have to give them credit where credit is due: by repeatedly pointing out errors (however trivial) out of the tens of thousands of news stories that are published every day, they've managed to get their supporters to the point where they'll trust a new story on www.siteiveneverheardofbefore.com/newishstuff/hillaryclintonpedophilering.html more than they will an actual newspaper. It's a real masterstroke in terms of controlling the narrative. "Anything negative you hear about me, it's fake, because there exist cases where newspapers have made errors, and we've selectively presented you only with those cases to create a narrative for you that newspapers are packed full of fakery." Not just newspapers - fact checkers, peer-reviewed articles, even official government statistics - all fake, because they've been presented with every case people can get their hands of of error, without the balancing context of the 10000x more that wasn't in error.
In the words of XKCD: "Dear God, I would like to file a bug report". ;)
It's the same thing that contributed to the Challenger explosion. They had a nice clean graph in front of them that plotted O-ring failures vs. temperature. There was no clear trend visible on the graph. The problem was that they omitted the successes, the cases where there were no O-ring failures. Here's what it looked like with that added in. All of the sudden there's a very clear trend of failure increasing at low temperatures - in fact, every low temperature launch had had O-ring failures, while very few high-temperature launches had. By being selective in what data you present (accidentally in that case, on purpose in the present case), you can get people to believe precisely the opposite of what is true.
I'll never forget the last thing grandma said to me before she died: "What are you doing in here with that knife?!?"
The GOD EMPEROR spoke. HIS word is law. All praise Trump!
Trumpmen!
Trump is definitely helping the NYT to succeed, even if that's not his intention. By singling out the NYT he's giving them a legitimacy as a voice for those that dislike Trump (which according to polls is well over half the nation). If he really wanted to hurt the NYT, which his words imply, he should stop talking to them and stop talking about them.
Everytime he bashes the NYT 100,000 people wonder what it is they said to upset him and go read the paper. Same with Saturday Night Live, the only reason I've watched it a few times is to go see what Trump was complaining about (and if he had a legitimate beef), I know I'm not the only one doing this.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Slashdot posts a couple of articles a week that invite Trump bashing. This one is a perfect example, you see "New York Times" in the headline and you know there will be a couple of hundred posts, most of which will mention Trump.
You forgot to mention Fox News there. I think it outclasses NYT in all the aspects you have mentioned.
The problem is that the NYT no longer meets their motto of "all the news that fits, we print" (apparently it's not "fit to print", but that's a quibble).
Rightly or wrongly (and I'd argue wrongly), they've embraced "advocacy journalism". Having a monoculture is never a good thing, because it renders the entire organization vulnerable to a common flaw. The NYT embraces diversity in every way, except in the most important one: thought. Politically, they are a monoculture, and that hurts them.
The problem isn't that lockstep ideology renders their editorial positions predictable; that's fine. It's the fact that it affects their news coverage, and it affects it negatively. When I'm reading a news story, I shouldn't be able to tell what the writer's opinions on the matter are, and yet in far too many cases, it's obvious. Worse, it's not only affected how stories are covered, but whether they get covered at all.
The most damning criticism of the NYT I've heard was a friend of mine who cancelled her subscription a few years ago. Her reason was that she was "tired of hearing people discussing controversies I'd never heard of". When newspapers decide not to report on a story because they feel it might empower their ideological opponents, they're not being reporters, they're being advocates. There's nothing wrong with advocacy, but you should at least be honest about it.
And, as the saying goes, "that's how you get Trump". How could an organization the size of NYT get the election so wrong? Because they were looking at it with blinders on. They may have put on the blinders intentionally, but their readers didn't. And yet their readers still suffered the effects of the blinders, too.
Don't forget Tufte's Challenger graph, which provides really the best visualization of the data. He's a master of visual communication.
If the information was presented in his fashion, a no-launch decision would have clearly been a no-brainer. This is why the soft arts are essential for engineers too.
https://groups.nceas.ucsb.edu/...
"You have liberated me from thought."
They didn't need that graph. Glass transition temperature in polymers is taught to just about every engineering student on the planet in first year materials science subjects.
As Feynman showed it was a management fuckup of ignoring experts.
There were a lot of contributing factors, but yes, this sadly was one. The Thiokol engineers were against launch, but they failed to make a sufficient case as to why exactly they felt the O-rings were unsafe (there actually was a Thiokol document showing that not only was O-ring failure high at low temperatures but that the second O-ring ceased to be redundant - but they didn't have the document available to them). The Shuttle program managers were getting mad at them for insisting on delays due to the low temperatures without being able to back it up (one of them said something along the lines of "My god, Thiokol - when do you want me to launch, April?") and eventually the Thiokol management dropped their objections (even though the engineers were still strongly against launch). The engineers all gathered round to watch the launch on TV, thinking it was going to explode on the pad. When it lifted off they all breathed a sigh of relief, only to have it dashed during the explosion.
I'll never forget the last thing grandma said to me before she died: "What are you doing in here with that knife?!?"
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
How do we fix this?
Seems like either we have to fight harder to make people see fake news and these dodgy blog sites/social media posts for what they are, or we have to give in and use all the same tactics to create a counter-narrative.
The same technique is being used to try to influence the up-coming French election, to get a far right candidate elected. Do we start posting counter-memes and creating blogs full of lies about her and linking to them on Facebook.fr?
Perhaps there is a third way, but it's risky. Create memes and fake stories supporting the far right candidate, but make them so bad and so obviously fake that they make people more critical and likely to reject them. The danger is that people are so stupid they believe them anyway. That already happened in the UK with stories about the EU.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
And this will be a fair comparison the moment when:
a) Trump prints retractions of his errors when they're pointed out to him
b) The signal-to-noise ratio of the Times approaches anything near Trump's utterances
Last post!
I don't think it was ever more objective, certainly not since William Randolph Hearst in the 1890s. Newspapers used to be more honest about their political leanings. For example, the Austin American Statesman used to be called the Austin American Democrat. Similar names can be found in smaller cities, the newspaper will be named Middletown Liberal Times or whatever.
The LA Times had a very clear policy of simply not reporting anything that didn't support their political leanings. In 1884 the ignored Grover Cleveland's election to president for several days, pretty much pretending it didn't happen.
Does trump a) apologize for his mistakes or b) blame someone else & double down?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Which is why Donald Trump is more believable than the NY Times
Only if you are a self-insulated, ignorant non-reader who only wants to hear your point of view from anyone willing to tell it.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I see no votes on parent. As of this posting (Score:0). Click on the word Score and the modal displays "No comment history available." Anonymous Cowards start with a score of 0 here. Always have.
There are so many free sources of news, it may be impossible to sell it in the near future.
It may also be impossible for commercial news sources to compete with the millions of "news enthusiasts" that post and analyze news simply for the fun of it.
Events are posted in near real-time on youtube and thousands of people dissect and analyze Wikileaks releases the instant they hit the internet.
There is no commercial news room that can scale out to that size.
Yes, the availability of so much news does force the consumer to filter out bullshit for him/her self - but many times you are getting bullshit from paid mainstream media - so you have to do the due diligence anyway if you want to stay informed.
Good luck MSM - you are competing with the entire internet - and I don't think you will win.
The human brain is wired for pessimism. It's a survival reflex. We want to read about bad news so as to be better prepared in case something like that comes our way.
Perhaps the original "fake news", in fact, came from our religious leaders. They tell us that sacrificing a hecatomb to Zeus or chanting a magic spell such as "There is no God but God and Mohammed is his Prophet" or "I accept Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Saviour" will ward off evil. Bad news reminds us that reality is different. That prayer and a positive attitude stop short of being able to halt the anvil falling from above, that mountains have more faith that they won't cast themselves into the sea than we do otherwise (and that TNT has more faith than either us or mountains). That it truly does rain upon both the Just and the un-Just, although the un-Just can generally afford umbrellas.
A steady diet of bad news isn't healthy either, though. Which is why we like our news sources salted with tales of baby ducks being rescued from storm drains.
Shut up, you fucking liar.
Last post!
and that is exactly the problem. The AP and every major United States news outlet is more then just 'selective' about what data they present.
They may 'pretend' what they are giving you is the news, but what they really give you is 'the news' they think 'should be' .
Here is a good example that was given to me by a ex-girlfriend who was a catholic and worked in a local news room.
Standing orders, if there was a story that came across the wire and it involved child molestation and a priest it would be presented if not a lead story that night. Anything else the involved molestation of a child, by a rabbi, a pastor, or a teacher was not newsworthy.
The girl quit when she was given footage taken at a peaceful prolife march and given the orders 'cut this footage to make these people look nuts'.
For another example, go back and watch the news footage of Clinton loosing. Note the emotional content of the 'news' being presented. It is obvious that every major news outlet , ( fox is only half a major outlet) is entirely staffed by people who considered it a 'tragedy' that Clinton didn't win.
Not that there are any 'unbiased' alternative outlets. Heck even Slashdot shows some bias it is hard to get away from, the problem is all of the American news outlets I'm aware of are much more interested in ratings and viewership then truth or objectivity. That is in many ways the fault of the consumers who have stopped demanding it and instead consume whatever is more 'pleasing' to them.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
Thank you for providing an example of how Trump's supporters happily reinterpret his statements so as to at least try to make them jive with reality.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I am signed up as well, but still pissed about how they did it. I was enticed by the $15/mo. trial subscription for a one month trial. Then they simply continued charging me. I thought it was deceitful. I only put up with it because I rather like the in-depth journalism.
I think what bothers the Trump supporters is that the stories are not supporting of Trump. I would argue that the major events covered are simply not supported by Trump's world view....well, he doesn't have a view so much as an ego, and the stories do not support that ego.
Here you go: https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2013reports/201310053fr.pdf
start on page 11 where they admit the targeting of conservatives was improper
The question is why nobody got fired/jailed for improper persecution of conservatives at the IRS. Why did e.g. Lois Lerner get to resign and keep the pension, instead of ending up in jail. Did Obama intervene, or was it somebody else? Who covered it up?
Pres. Trump, it's not too late to appoint a special prosecutor! Subverting the Constitution using administrative powers is no small feat. Heads of these eggs should roll. Obama may be immune, but the underlings can still be indicted to stop these kinds of crime in the future.
I'm a Trump supporter, and you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
I know Trump is a narcissistic asshole who doesn't give a shit about the truth. He's playing the game your ilk invented, and doing it better than you ever imagined possible. You're just angry that your side lost, but you know they're all playing the same game.
You're either a moron or intellectually dishonest if you actually believe that Hillary or the Democrats have some kind of moral superiority. They lie, cheat, and steal just as much, if not more.
Well maybe if conservative republicans stopped acting like giant douchebags who seek profit over duty, then they might actually write some favorable articles.
Any bias that exists is born out of republicans' general hatred for doing their constitutionally-mandated civic duties in a manner that clearly displays their level of shill.
He believed that NASA's delusional bureaucracy was ultimately to blame and it needed to be torn down entirely and rebuilt. The other members of the commission disagreed, which is pretty much why two decades later the crew of the Columbia died. Sadly, a narrative of organizational incompetence is extremely hard to keep alive in the mainstream media, so in the minds of most people they're still just random tragedies... an unavoidable price of space flight.
Two other things worth noting about Feynman's assessment: he was strongly impressed by the software systems of the Shuttle, considering it to be much more robust than the hardware (not the sort of thing one often hears these days), and the coda to his appendix is, of course, a timeless one worth quoting:
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
No it can't. There's value in local news teams that you don't get with national or international outfits. That's why the televised networks usually have local news followed by national and world news. Most people are primarily interested in their area, and only the top stories beyond.
Gotta agree with sibling, and can drill down even further...
There's a reason I still support and read our local paper, printed in the town nearest my house; this is a town that has barely 2,000 souls in it, mind. Oh, and the "local" TV news around here covers and centers on Portland, OR - which is 50 miles away.
The NYT isn't going to tell me the school board minutes, the city council minutes, or the local budget/tax/bond stuff. I don't expect the NYT to print a picture of my kid making the winning score at the last high school basketball game, or remind me when stuff like the Friendship Jamboree is coming up. No coupons for the local grocery store are going to be found in the NYT, either.
--
Also, there is a hazard in consolidation, one we can already see. The US (and UK, and etc) have a grand tradition of slanted/yellow journalism that is present even today, denials be damned. Only difference is back then, the papers proudly proclaimed their slants up-front (today? Not so much - you usually get denials from 'em). The best way to counterbalance that bias was to have competing outlets with different slants, then you could compare/contrast to get the actual truth of a given matter if you wanted it.
Besides, do you really want to go back to the days (1970's-1990s or so) where a select few outlets were the literal 'gatekeepers of truth'? Personally, well, fuck that. Let the marketplace win out - webhosting is cheap, the code for it is free of cost, and it doesn't take much more than a 10th grade education these days to set up a working bit of homegrown journalism. The market can (and in my opinion will) choose the winners and losers from the lot (see also The Drudge Report --love it or hate it-- as an example of a local gossip rag/site that exploded and went international.)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
According to polls, he had about a 25% chance of winning the electoral college, if you can actually do math and understand how statistics work (HuffPo obviously didn't understand that). Fivethirtyeight pretty much nailed it; they predicted 4 possible scenarios that had equivalent odds of happening, and the one that occurred was one of them almost exactly.
Just because people believe something doesn't make it true.
BTW, Trump supporters take him seriously, but not literally. They aren't parsing his words for nuance and subtlety.
And yet he constantly shows everyone that he should be taken exactly literally.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I live in a town of 5000 people and while the local weekly newspaper has shrunk somewhat over the past 20-odd years that I've been here, it's still loaded with advertising, mostly for local businesses. I'd say there's about a 50/50 mix of editorial content vs advertising in that paper. I have no idea how they manage that; they do have a full-time advertising sales guy who runs around town flogging it.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
Seriously? In the era of overt bias and propaganda, 'fake news', and 'alternative facts'?
I can't help it if the journalists in this country are dead set on proving Trump right. He should be the one person it should be possible to oppose by sticking to talking about normal, sensible truth but when faced with such a jackass the media can't help but lie and blither a stream of irrelevances. It's been very illuminating.
That doesn't mean they lie more than he does (of course not), but they are a much deeper and more durable fixture of American (and world) culture than the shit talking 70 year old buffoon in the White House.