Last Thursday, Bill Keller, editor of The New York Times, had several meetings with the news staff.
Gawker has an excellent summary of these conversations.
There are some quotes related to the Times’ transition to “journalism on the Web” and the “Web-print relationship.”
He spoke about the “gradual reallocation of resources from print towards digital” and copy editors being moved to the day side, so that there could be a “greater flow of fresh quality edit material.”
“We can’t let our reverence for quality become a straitjacket in new media.”
“The web environment is different… We can offer guidance but we cannot insist on the same control we exercise over print.”
“Online and in print, we are the New York Times.”
He spoke of the new building: “Pioneers have already settled in our gleaming frontier.”
“There have also been reports of a rat sighting,” he said, though he hurried to say that it was unsubstantiated.
“The mice aren’t scheduled to move in until June 15.”
“I implore you to be versatile.”
“It’s an immense improvement over our venerable, but cramped and deteriorating, building on 43rd Street.
The company is heading for a long future.”
About the reduction in the size of the paper at the end of the summer he said:
“It’s an inch and a half narrower.”
“There’s no dramatic makeover of our design.”
In contrast to the Wall Street Journal’s redesign, he said that the Times would “absorb the change without a great deal of fanfare.”
He said the changes include a display page for the foreign desk, and limiting the jumping of A1 stories to other sections (a real revolution!)
While the paper will be adding pages, the “actual reduction of the newshole is about 5 percent,” he said, which will give editors “some incentive about being a little more ruthless about throwing stories back for cuts.”
“Our stories are too often too long… The 1200-word stories could be 800 or 900.”
“There are editors at a Page 1 meeting boasting that a story is only 1400 words.”
Someone asked how the Times plans to make money off the web. “I heartily believe we will,” Keller said.
“How, is a lot more complicated.”
“The web creates openings for very specialized jobs.”
“Sometimes you have to go out and hire them from other places.”
“But in the reallocation of resources from print to digital, we’re not talking about closing down print slots and opening up Web slots.”
And then someone asked about City Room, which is Sewell Chan’s new project, and is basically a mini-New York Times, but online and only about New York.
“The idea is that the New York Times is not giving up New York City… We’re taking one of our most inventive and productive journalists and setting him loose.”
“He will do all different kinds of news without any narrow portfolio.”
One of the readers of the Gawker blog had the best remark:
“Too little, too late.”
Yes.
Slow change is no change.
