Remember Three Years Back When Sulzberger Said He Didn’t Care Whether There Would Be A NYT Print Edition by 2012 – Still The Case?

Philip M. Stone March 25, 2010 Follow on Twitter

Have Times changed? It was back in 2007 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger caused a global uproar when he told the Israeli Haaretz newspaper, “I really don’t know whether we’ll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don’t care either.”

Well that caused a bit of a hue and cry back home, too, and a month later Sulzberger had to explain himself to staff. “We are continuing to invest in our newspapers, for we believe that they will be around for a very long time. This point of view is not about nostalgia or a love of newsprint. Instead, it is rooted in fundamental business realities: Our powerful and trusted print brands continue to draw educated and affluent audiences. Traditional print newspaper audiences are still significantly larger than their Web counterparts. Print continues to command high levels of reader engagement. And, of course, we still make most of our money from print advertising and circulation revenue. And yes, I remember what I was supposed to have said last month at Davos about not having a printed product in five years time.

"So let me clear the air on this issue. It is my heartfelt view that newspapers will be around -- in print -- for a long time. ‘But’ – there’s always a ‘but’ -- “I also believe that we must be prepared for that judgment to be wrong. My five-year timeframe is about being ready to support our news, advertising and other critical operations on digital revenue alone ...whenever that time comes."

Well, three years have passed and a lot has passed under the bridge since then including print advertising really tanking, big NYT editorial layoffs, needing a $250 million loan at 14% from Carlos Slim, named by Forbes Magazine as the world’s richest man, and even selling and leasing back its gleaming new headquarters – all of this with a view to survival -- so with more than half of that five-year span already past it seems this is about the right time to re-visit what the man is saying these days about print’s future.

The tone may be a bit more tender, but the message is pretty much the same – the distribution of news should not be limited to the traditional platform – print – but rather a newspaper should be available on whatever platform the public wants, even if that is not a paper platform. He makes clear he doesn’t believe that print is going away any time soon, but if it were to then the newspaper still remains; it would be just the print platform that disappears.

Speaking at a Bloomberg media meeting this month Sulzberger said the metered news approach to be introduced next year to read online NYT articles “is absolutely the right thing today. But will it be the best thing 10 years from now? I don’t know.” But he made clear the newspaper needed additional revenue streams, “critical” to maintaining quality journalism.

He stressed that the various new platforms that The Times was using to deliver its product did not mean the end of print. “For those New York Times customers who want print, it is not as though print is going away. It’s a critical part of today; it will be a critical part I think for many years to come.”

But as technology moves on so must newspapers. “The iPad is also going to be a critical part just the way the Kindle’s a critical part. At the end of the day we can’t define ourselves by our method of distribution; what we care about at the end of the day is our journalism, our quality journalism.”

At a meeting of business writers and editors a week later he continued the theme. “The challenge we face is to translate our brand into a digital era.” In doing that he doesn’t oppose Google (putting him at odds with Rupert Murdoch, let alone many global newspaper trade organizations) – “railing against Google is sort of railing against oxygen” – nor does he oppose having Times material available on platforms he doesn’t own even if that means he doesn’t have complete control, but his line in the sand there is not to lose subscriber control to the owners of those platforms.

For instance, he doesn’t want Apple’s iPad platform mediating with Times subscribers. “Having that direct relationship with our customer is critical," Sulzberger said. "We are going to continue to have that, because it's critical to our business success."

Right now a lot of experimentation is going on to find the right free-pay mix. “I would expect, for example, that when the iPad becomes available (April 3) there will be a New York Times app and it will be free,” he told the business conference. “One of the things we are looking at is how best to integrate pay across the various mediums of Web and tablets and iPhones.”

And that probably best sums up where newspapers are today – trying to figure out how to integrate, at a decent profit, across the various delivery platforms. Having that answer yesterday was already too late.

See also in ftm Knowledge

Media Business Models Emerging

After a rough transition media business models are emerging. Challenges remain. There are Web models, mobile models, free models, pay models and a few newer models. It makes for exciting times. This ftm Knowledge file examines emerging business models and the speed-of-light changes. 123 pages PDF (May 2010)

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