Nothing to do with music here, but a leaked internal report by the New York Times is a stark guide to some of the struggles happening in other media industries as companies move from analog to digital businesses. The report starts by claiming that the newspaper is “winning at journalism” in terms of the quality of its reporting, but that “we are falling behind in a second critical area: the art and science of getting our journalism to readers.” It cites the efforts of competitors including the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, but also digital-first journalism entities like First Look Media and Vox Media (the report was leaked, fittingly enough, on another of those competitors, BuzzFeed). “Huffington Post and Flipboard often get more traffic from Times journalism than we do,” it admits. “In contrast, over the last year The Times has watched readership fall significantly. Not only is the audience on our website shrinking but our audience on our smartphone apps has dipped, an extremely worrying sign on a growing platform.” The full report is long, but very interesting reading – and not just to breathe a sigh of relief that you’re not in the newspaper business.
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…
Without the NYT we no longer have trained, reliable, boots on the ground to report the news aggregated by all these other streaming services.
Bottom line. It is crucial that we find a way to keep this important resource for news and information fully staffed and operating.