This is a fascinating and candid talk.
Intended as an”off the record” talk, it was leaked, and you can read and watch it here at the Nieman JournalismLab website.
For me the most striking impression is this:
The editor of The New York Times talks like as if his newsroom was going to be integrated.
Well, this is an old, old story.
Too old to be news today.
And it’s amazing to me that these basic goals still have not be preached by the New York Times that is, according Bill Keller, “the most innovative online publisher in the business.”
Oh, boy, that too much!
Just read these quotes from the speech:
• Prioritizing the web is “our Manhattan Project.”
• The single best advice we’ve gotten, I think, is to spend some time living without print. And we’ve both been trying to do that, trying to experience The New York Times and our competition mostly on screens — iPhone, laptop, Kindle, Times Reader –- trying to better understand the joys and frustrations of our journalism delivered online.
• I think everyone agrees that over the past four-plus years, we’ve come a long way in breaking down the psychological, cultural, and organizational barriers that isolated print from digital. But the gospel still needs preaching
• We understand that The New York Times is, and has to be, a technology company as well as a journalism company.
• As long as we’re doing journalism on separate publishing systems, we will not be an integrated newsroom.
• We need to figure out the right journalistic product to deliver to mobile platforms and devices.
Well, you better go faster or you will be late, very late.
And you will not make it!
Tags: Bill Keller, Kindle, Nieman JournalismLab, The New York Times, Times Reader, iPhone, newsrooms integration
