From ‘Page One’: On how the NYT learned to stop worrying and love the blog

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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Here’s a tidbit from Poynter. It’s self-explanatory. It’s also worth considering the entire post, and seeing the upcoming moving, and reading the upcoming book:

By Jennifer 8. Lee:

To coincide with the release of “Page One: Inside The New York Times,” NPR’s David Folkenflik edited a book by leading thinkers about where media is headed. In this essay, former New York Times reporter Jennifer Lee describes how the Times has adjusted to the seismic changes in media.

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If you think of legacy newspapers as department stores — with all kinds of news available behind a single storefront — the future of news is looking more and more like a mall. A single complex aggregates a lot of niche products sold under separate brands — some favoring quality, others volume. That targeted branding is useful in a world where our content is disaggregated and reassembled via Twitter and Facebook feeds. The microbrands can have their own Twitter accounts, Facebook pages and YouTube channels. This aggregated mall model is already peeking out (some more successfully executed than others), and not only thanks to AOL’s acquisition of The Huffington Post and TechCrunch. In the two years since I left, The Times has accelerated its drive to showcase micro-brands in blogs such as the City Room (about New York City), the Caucus (politics), Well (personal health) and the revamped DealBook (on the financial markets).

Few readers would click to “like” The Times’ national section on Facebook. But they do become Facebook fans of the Caucus or DealBook. And in the process, The Times has served up evidence it recognizes the strength and value of treating individual reporters and features as micro-brands.

This is a noticeable change from my early days at The Times, when the reporters reflexively deferred to the institution. It was considered unsavory to appear on television too much, or otherwise be perceived as self-promotional. But a few years ago The New York Times communications department started calling reporters to book them for television and radio interviews, and the marketing department started to create Twitter accounts and Facebook pages for many of its reporters.