The New York Times Company has a $400 million debt payment due in five months, and management has not yet explained how it plans to meet this. The company is nearly out of cash, its operations are now burning cash, and its attempts to sell assets have, so far, been unsuccessful.
As part of my digital democracy class for MCDM, I created a mini-site on how newspapers are (finally) embracing the Internet. Certianly, however, it’s going to take more than a shift in business models, newsroom strategy and attitudes on the part of newspaper companies for them to stay alive.
In early October, I wrote about The Washington Post’s launch of its Political Browser. In attempt to capture the attention of political junkies and the growing number of Americans regularly consuming news online, the Post created a site rich with content from rival media outlets. In the heat of the election cycle, it drew on its stellar reputation for political reporting to bring readers “what’s good on the web.”
Washingtonpost.com’s recent launch of its Political Browser is not just an attempt to get in on the game of link journalism and news aggregation but an insightful way at wooing 36 percent of the American public that now regularly consumes news online. Perhaps more importantly, their nontraditional approach will be important in the future in capturing the attention of the young and currently disengaged to whom technology is second nature.
That the public is turning away from traditional media in lieu of online news isn’t news. But as the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press reported last month, a third of the public has reached a crossroads in which online news consumption blends with traditional media outlets. Many newspapers haven’t taken well to the trend, and The Post is in a position to lead the way.
