WHAT'S NEXT: INNOVATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS

Last October, the editor of The New York Times made some comments about the Apple Slate.

Bill Keller said:

“I’m hoping we can get the newsroom more actively involved in the challenge of delivering our best journalism in the form of Times Reader, iPhone apps, WAP, or the impending Apple slate, or whatever comes after that.”

Watch here the video clip with his comments.

Many people think that he has been confidentially briefed by Apple, and don’t be surprised if you see very soon The New York Times shows an iSlate version of the paper developed by The New York Times Research & Development Lab.

If The New York Times is going to do it, you better start the same digital way.

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!

Two hours ago, the editor of The New York Times sent this email memo to the newsroom staff:

I had planned to invite you to the newsroom and break this news in person today, but I’ve been hit by something that seems to be the flu. Though I strongly believe in delivering bad news in person, I don’t want to add insult to injury by spreading infection.

Let me cut to the chase: We have been told to reduce the newsroom by 100 positions between now and the end of the year.

We hope to accomplish this by offering voluntary buyouts. On Thursday, the Company will be sending buyout offers to everyone in the newsroom. Getting a buyout package does NOT mean we want you to leave. It is simply easier to send the envelopes to everyone. If you think a buyout may be right for you, you have up to 45 days to decide whether you will accept it or not.

As before, if we do not reach 100 positions through buyouts, we will be forced to go to layoffs. I hope that won’t happen, but it might.

Our colleagues in editorial and op-ed, and on the business side, also face another round of budget cuts.

In recent years, we’ve managed to avoid the disabling cutbacks that have hit other newsrooms. The Company has chosen to protect the journalism by cutting production and other business-side costs, and the newsroom itself has managed its resources frugally. These latest cuts will still leave us with the largest, strongest and most ambitious editorial staff of any newsroom in the country, if not the world.

I won’t pretend that these staff cuts will not add to the burdens of journalists whose responsibilities have grown faster than their compensation. But we’ve been looking hard at ways to minimize the impact — in part, by re-engineering some of our copy flow. I won’t promise this will be easy or painless, but I believe we can weather these cuts without seriously compromising our commitment to coverage of the region, the country and the world. We will remain the single best news organization on earth.

I doubt that anyone is shocked by the fact of this, but it is happening sooner than anyone anticipated. When we took our 5 percent pay cuts, it was in the hope that this would fend off the need for more staff cuts this year. But I accept that if it’s going to happen, it should be done quickly. We will get through this and move on.

In my absence, Bill Schmidt and John and Jill have volunteered to take your questions this afternoon. Feel free to bring additional questions to me as soon as I’m back, or check with Bill Schmidt or John or Jill privately, or save them for the next Throw Stuff at Bill session, which is in a couple of weeks.

We often — and rightly — voice our gratitude that we work for a company and a family that prize quality journalism above all. I hope you know that the company and the family, and I, feel an equal debt of gratitude to all of you whose sacrifice and loyalty have kept us strong.

Like you, I yearn for the day when we can do our jobs without looking over our shoulders for economic thunderstorms.

Bad news?

Yes.

The editor of The New York Times was expecting to survive from the global financial crisis with no more cuts in his newsroom.

Well, if the Sulzberger family wants to keep the Boston Globe, The New York Times has to pay part of the bill.

The big problem with this kind of cuts is that the newsroom will do the same with less.

And what we need is… to change not to cut.

If not, more cuts, more cuts, more cuts…

So, change or cut.

The New York Times has made, I am sorry, a bad option.

Cut, cut, cut.

(In the picture by Sara Krulwichs, Bill Keller, last Marc,h announcing other cuts)

Not dead yet: the newspaper in the days of digital anarchy

It was a passionate, candid and smart speech.

My feeling is that 100% of today’s newspaper editors around the world will subscribe to his positions.

Read it here and you’ll see the main concerns and fears of the newspaper industry.

A lot of problems.

A few solutions.

So … we need less analysis and more changes.