An Instagram image of a surly A-Rod graces the NYT homepage right now.
I look at this image and all I see are pictures of people jumping over sharks.
NYTimes has a dazzling, in-depth piece on owls. There is a video, a podcast, recordings of various calls, and interviews. Excellent.
I thought of half a dozen puns to write with this piece. I’m not going to use any of them in honor of how great this piece is.
OMG The New York Times is planning a major redesign! Excuse us while we nerd out for the next six hours.
The NYT’s useful interactive graphic showing how much snow various parts of the Northeast are getting this weekend.
Today in hackings originating from China: The New York Times. The hacking incident began after The Times started working on this story about Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao’s fortune. Every Times employee had their corporate password stolen, and 53 employees had their personal computers infiltrated, mostly outside of the office. So yeah, kind of a big story.
More than a year and a half later, it’s clear the New York Times’ paywall is not only valuable, it’s helped turn the paper’s subscription dollars, which once might have been considered the equivalent of a generous tithing, into a significant revenue-generating business. As of this year, the company is expected to make more money from subscriptions than from advertising — the first time that’s happened.Bloomberg’s Edmund Lee • Discussing the success of the New York Times paywall, which has done something very surprising — it’s allowed the New York Times to make more than half of its overall revenue from subscriptions, rather than the traditional 80 percent advertising/20 percent subscriptions balance that has traditionally defined newspapers. That’s good for a number of reasons, with the biggest being that the New York Times is no longer as overly reliant on ad dollars to sell its news. That’s an awesome spot for the Times to be, but the real question: Does that mean anything for papers that aren’t the Times, which may be a tougher sell than a paper of record?
It’s a little early to know exactly what we can learn from social media metrics. I think the way we’ll be looking at this stuff will be very different in four years, in eight years, in twelve years. For right now, we’re kind of in an awkward adolescent age … we’re out of the classical innocent era of our youth where you could just call someone on the phone. But we’re not sure what the substitute for that is yet.With all the recent brewhaha about Nate Silver’s controversial projections for tonight’s outcome, and while we’re all waiting for some legit data to come back from the polls, it seems like a good time to revisit our exclusive interview with Mr. Silver back in September. Enjoy! (via election)
The phone call the night before he left [Turkey for Syria], there was screaming and slamming on the phone in discussions with editors. It was at this time that he called his wife and gave his last haunting directive that if anything happens to me I want the world to know the New York Times killed me.Ed Shadid • Speaking at the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee’s convention on Sunday about the fate of his cousin, storied New York Times reporter Anthony Shadid, who died not long after he allegedly made this statement. The New York Times disputes the report, with a spokesperson saying this: “With respect, we disagree with Ed Shadid’s version of the facts. The Times does not pressure reporters to go into combat zones.” (His widow has chosen to stay silent on the matter.) No matter who’s telling the truth here, Anthony Shadid’s work meant a lot to many people, and it goes without saying that we’d rather Anthony was still with us.
[Chairman Arthur] Sulzberger, working with the board and search firm Spencer Stuart, initially put together a list of fewer than a dozen candidates to lead the company, according to the people familiar with the matter.
Executives on the list who have been discussed included aspirational picks such as Google Inc.’s Eric Schmidt and Eileen Naughton, the people said. Schmidt’s digital-media credentials were attractive to Sulzberger, who wants an executive with significant online experience, according to the people.
Schmidt, 57, stepped down as CEO of Mountain View, California-based Google in April 2011, while remaining chairman of the company. Naughton, a top sales executive at the Web- search giant, was president of Time Warner Inc.’s magazine division before joining Google in 2006.
Sulzberger declined to comment on the CEO search, as did Google and Akamai. The Google candidates are unlikely to take the job, one of the people familiar with the situation said.
Schmidt may just be a pie-in-the-sky candidate for the Times, but as Josh Sternberg pointed out in a March article, media companies are starting to think like tech companies. If Schmidt, on an off chance, decided to move from Mountain View to NYC, it’d be the most blatant admission yet that this is the case. (Now, by the way, might be a good time to look back at the New York Magazine’s piece on the departure of Janet Robinson, the company’s last CEO.)
Anthony Bourdain tends to get noticed. The chef turned televised tour guide is macho but not overbearing, profane without being coarse, and tall and handsome. How handsome? I was at an outdoor social event with my wife some years ago when he passed by, and she was so transfixed by him that she walked into a bush. I hate him for that, but am unsurprised that his charmed life is about to add a new chapter.The NYT’s David Carr • Writing about how Anthony Bourdain is all dreamy and stuff. Oh, and his new gig with CNN.
Yahoo wants to buy Hulu now too. They’re going on an “I...
I’m moving back to New York in a few days. Unlike past...
OMG. I got so...
In this week’s Newsweek, a little...
Tumblr this morning. [h/t anne]
#@#$%!.tumblr.com
Here’s a hidden feature that shipped in...
» A corporate whodunit: Months after a high-profile ouster, New York Magazine takes a look back at the circumstances that led to Robinson’s departure. Who was the person who actually pulled the knife? Was it Gonzalez? Did Sulzberger do it himself, or was it his ambitious cousin Michael Golden, who fought with Robinson over the potential sale of the Boston Globe? And what role did digital exec Martin Nisenholtz, who fought a losing battle against Robinson over paywalls, play? And let’s be honest: For all we know, did the butler do it?
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A critic’s notebook article on Monday about the prevalence of standing ovations at Broadway shows described incorrectly the quickness with which audience members appeared to be on their feet at a performance of the current revival of “Death of a Salesman.” Their ovation seemed to occur within a millisecond — one-thousandth of a second — not a megasecond, which is one million seconds.The New York Times • Writing a correction in a piece on standing ovations. Excuse us why we stand up and applaud this one for a megasecond. (ht Hypervocal)
Front pages: 5/2/03 vs. 5/2/11
HT @nytjim
It’s almost funny, how sad it all is.
In other words: Bush declared a major victory, while Obama scored one.
The New York Times Company reported on Thursday a large gain in first-quarter net income, driven largely by the sale of its regional newspapers, the sale of part of its stake in a New England sports group and an increase in circulation revenue at its flagship newspaper.
Net income for the quarter was $42.1 million, or 28 cents a share, compared with $5.4 million, or 4 cents a share, in the period a year earlier. Nearly 70 percent of the company’s net income in the quarter came from the sale of its Regional Media Group, which yielded the company a large tax benefit.
Of note: The company’s digital subscription picture looked rosy, but operating profit was still down because of a decline in advertising in both print and digital forms. The company has nearly half a million digital subscribers to the New York Times and International Herald Tribune products, and another 11,000 to its Boston Globe site.
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