The-Full-New-York-Times-Innovation-Report

Innovation March 24, 2014

ExecutiveSummaryInnovation  March 24, 2014

2 Executive Summary

Introduction and Flipboard often get more traffic from Times journalism than we do.The New York Times is winning at journalism. Of allthe challenges facing a media company in the digi- In contrast, over the last year The Times hastal age, producing great journalism is the hardest. watched readership fall significantly. Not only is theOur daily report is deep, broad, smart and engaging audience on our website shrinking but our audience­— and we’ve got a huge lead over the competition. on our smartphone apps has dipped, an extremely worrying sign on a growing platform. At the same time, we are falling behind in a sec-ond critical area: the art and science of getting our Our core mission remains producing the world’sjournalism to readers. We have always cared about best journalism. But with the endless upheavalthe reach and impact of our work, but we haven’t in technology, reader habits and the entire busi-done enough to crack that code in the digital era. ness model, The Times needs to pursue smart new strategies for growing our audience. The urgency is This is where our competitors are pushing ahead only growing because digital media is getting moreof us. The Washington Post and The Wall Street crowded, better funded and far more innovative.Journal have announced aggressive moves in re-cent months to remake themselves for this age. First The first section of this report explores in detailLook Media and Vox Media are creating newsrooms the need for the newsroom to take the lead in get-custom-built for digital. The Guardian and USA ting more readers to spend more time reading moreToday have embraced emerging best practices that of our journalism. It offers specific strategies andhave helped grow readership. And Huffington Post tactics to accomplish this goal, often called audience development.Pulitzer Day, April 2013 3

Simply offering recommendations for improving room’s momentum in many critical areas that weour efforts to get our journalism to readers is not discuss throughout the report — key digital pro-enough, however. The difficulties we face in audi- motions, promising product initiatives, the mobileence development are symptomatic of our need to imperative, and productive collaborations with thebecome a more nimble, digitally focused newsroom business side. The masthead recently embraced an-that can thrive in a landscape of constant change. alytics and is in the process of building up a team that will help the newsroom use data to inform deci- The second part of this report examines specific sions, which would have been one of our main rec-recommendations that we believe will help strength- ommendations.en our newsroom for the digital era. That meanstaking more time to assess the landscape and chart That momentum has contributed to a new sensethe road ahead, rethink print-centric traditions, use of openness and opportunity across the organiza-experiments and data to inform decisions, hire and tion. Our company goals speak volumes: Strategyempower the right digital talent and work hand in for Growth, Speed and Agility, Unlocking the Powerhand with reader-focused departments on the busi- of Data, and One NYT. The newsroom, once resis-ness side. These needs are all deeply intertwined — tant to change, is energized by these recent success-getting better at one will help all the others. es and eager to tackle difficult questions and try new things. And the business side, with a growing bench This is a moment we are well positioned to seize. of talent and an increasingly shared mission of serv- The anxiety that filled the newsroom only a few ing readers, is eager for the newsroom lead the way.years ago has mostly dissipated. The success of thepaywall has provided financial stability as we be- Our overarching goal is to help the mastheadcome more digitally focused. The sale of other prop- build on that momentum and take advantage of thaterties like The Boston Globe has allowed the leader- openness.ship to focus squarely on The New York Times. BothMark Thompson and Jill Abramson have established For this report, we have pulled together informa-themselves as willing and eager to push the compa- tion and insights to help you do that, based on hun-ny in new, sometimes uncomfortable directions. dreds of interviews, a deep dive into our operations, Indeed, all of us have been struck by the news- a close look at the competitive landscape and, with that rarest of journalistic privileges, the time to stepThe Times Reaches A Vast Print And Digital Audience....30M 20M 13.5M 11.3MWeb readers in U.S. Mobile readers in News Alerts audience Twitter followersper month U.S. per month6.5M 5.7M 1.25M 760KE-Mail Newsletters Facebook followers Print Subscribers Digital SubscribersSubscribers4 Executive Summary

back and think. viewed ever suggested tinkering with the journalistic Some of these recommendations will seem obvi- values and integrity that make the Times the great- est journalistic institution in the world. But we mustous; others may seem more controversial at first evolve, and quickly, to maintain that status over theglance. All were developed with full commitment to coming decades.the values of The Times and with the understandingthat we have few extra resources lying around. The few new roles we have proposed are not fo-cused on creating new journalism; their goal is to getmore out of the journalism we are already creating.We want to help tune the newsroom engine to get allthe cylinders firing more efficiently. It should be stated explicitly that there is no singletransformational idea in this report. Transforma-tion can be a dangerous word in our current envi-ronment because it suggests a shift from one solidstate to another; it implies there is an end point. In-stead, we have watched the dizzying growth of smartphones and tablets, even as we are still figuring outthe web. We have watched the massive migration ofreaders to social media even as we were redesigningour home page. Difficult new questions will arrive with each newshift. In all likelihood, we will spend the rest of ourcareers wrestling with them. The leader of anotherorganization called this era, “A period of muddlingthrough.” Not a single person among the hundreds we inter-...But Many Competitors Are Growing Faster Huffington Post surpassed us years ago 120M in reader traffic, and BuzzFeed pulled ahead 100M in 2013.80M Huffington Post USA Today60M BuzzFeed New York Times40M Wall Street Journal Vox Media 20M JUN 2013 AUG 2013 OCT 2013 DEC 2013 JAN 2014 Readers(Millions) APR 2013 5

Our Proposals, In BriefCHAPTER 1: GROWING OUR AUDIENCEMAKE DEVELOPING OUR AUDIENCE A CORE AND URGENT PART OF OUR MISSIONMore than ever, the hard work of growing our audi- should be everyone’s job. We explore several ar-ence falls squarely on the newsroom. The realities eas that we believe can position us for continuedof a cluttered Internet and distracted mobile world growth: discovery (how we package and distributerequire extra effort to get our journalism to readers. our journalism), promotion (how we call attentionThis work requires creativity, editorial judgment to our journalism) and connection (how we createand offers us the chance to ensure that our journal- a two-way relationship with readers that deepensism lands with even greater impact. their loyalty). At both digital and traditional com- petitors, these functions are now considered part of There should be a senior newsroom leader in the newsroom’s responsibilities.charge of Audience Development, but this effortCHAPTER 2: STRENGTHENING OUR NEWSROOMCOLLABORATE WITH BUSINESS-SIDE UNITS FOCUSED ON READER EXPERIENCEThis shift would provide the newsroom, virtually for better integration. Recent initiatives, includingovernight, with many of the necessary skills and NYT Now, have shown the benefits of collaborationinsights to take our digital report to the next level. across these departments. We are not proposing aThere are a number of departments and units, most wholesale reorganization. But we do believe simplyof which are considered part of the business side, issuing a new policy —­ collaborating with our col-that are explicitly focused on the reader experience, leagues focused on reader experience is encouragedincluding Design, Technology, Consumer Insight and expected —­ would send a powerful signal andGroup, R&D and Product. unlock a huge store of creative energy and insights.These functions represent a clear opportunityCREATE A NEWSROOM STRATEGY TEAM team would keep newsroom leaders apprised ofMany newsroom leaders are so consumed with the competitors’ strategies, changing technology anddemands of the daily report that they have little time shifting reader behavior. It would help track proj-to step back and think about long-term questions. ects around the company that affect our digital re-When we were simply a newspaper, this singular fo- port, help the masthead set and evaluate prioritiescus made sense. But we must now juggle print, the and conduct occasional deep dives to answer spe-web, apps, newsletters, news alerts, social media, cific questions. And it would facilitate desk-level ex-video, an international edition and a range of stand- periments and communicate the results back to thealone products. newsroom to ensure we’re exploring new areas and learning from our efforts. Our suggestion is to create a small strategy teamwith the central role of advising the masthead. The6 Executive Summary

MAP A STRATEGY TO MAKE THE NEWSROOM A TRULY DIGITAL-FIRST ORGANIZATIONStories are typically filed late in the day. Our mobile sively reorganized around a digital-first rather thanapps are organized by print sections. Desks metic- a print-first schedule. The health and profitabilityulously lay out their sections but spend little time of our print paper means we don’t yet need to fol-thinking about social strategies. Traditional report- low them down this path. But it is essential to begining skills are the top priority in hiring and promo- the work of questioning our print-centric traditions,tion. The habits and traditions built over a century conducting a comprehensive assessment of our digi-and a half of putting out the paper are a powerful, tal needs, and imagining the newsroom of the future.conservative force as we transition to digital ­­— none This means reassessing everything from our rostermore so than the gravitational pull of Page One. of talent to our organizational structure to what weSome of our traditional competitors have aggres- do and how we do it. 7

Our Mission (And How It Evolved)Six months ago, you asked A.G. Sulzberger to pull have focused our work around new challenges: Let’stogether some of the most forward-thinking minds find ways to leverage The Times’ journalism and tal-from around the newsroom to develop smart, sound ents in even smarter and more effective ways. Let’sways to lift our fortunes through our journalism. think through the most persistent and difficult ques-The eight-person team – with the help of two col- tions that have nagged at The Times. Let’s identifyleagues from the strategy group – included digital, and share emerging opportunities and best practic-design and business skills anchored to a rock-solid es. Let’s identify the roadblocks and suggest ways tojournalistic foundation. remove them. We spent the first few months reporting. We went This report represents our best attempt to pro-on a listening tour of the business side, we met with vide answers. Our hope is that helping the mastheadhundreds of employees from around the newsroom, identify some of the most pressing problems andwe interviewed leaders at dozens of other news or- most promising opportunities will smooth the wayganizations and spent time with readers. We pored for innovators inside the building.over internal analytics, studied competing web sites,and read more reports, presentations and articles Finally, we are well aware that this newsroom hasabout changes in digital media than we can count. invested a lot of talent and time in this group. The report is just one return on that investment. Another In effect, we did a deep-dive reporting project on is that you have produced eight committed evange-our own paper and industry. By the end, we had a lists to help push the newsroom to embrace its digi-strong sense of both the opportunities and internal tal future. We will do our part to spread the lessonsroadblocks that need to be addressed to thrive in a and insights captured here across the organization.rapidly changing digital media landscape. This report reflects a critical shift from the origi-nal mission. Though the initial assumption was thatwe would emerge with ideas for a stand-alone prod-uct — such as NYT Now — our reporting showed usthat the more urgent need was to focus on the coreof The New York Times. Helping The Times adjust to this moment ofpromise and peril, we concluded, would have great-er journalistic and financial impact than virtuallyany product idea we might have suggested. Thatinsight was supported almost unanimously by thedigital newsroom, our leadership and our businesscolleagues. Focusing on the core is harder than starting some-thing new because every proposal threatens tradi-tion and turf. But the need is more urgent becauseof the accelerating pace of change and the over-stretched newsroom resources. Since that pivot from the original mission, we8 Executive Summary

The Team Adam B. Ellick Adam Bryant Senior Video Journalist Business Columnist Studied Disruptive Innovation, Design Interviewed more than 300 C.E.O.s for Thinking, and Social Television at the Corner Office, and wrote two books on Harvard Business School/MIT Media leadership, management and culture. Lab. Bahrain and Pakistan coverage Edited Pulitzer-winning series on the won consecutive Overseas Press Club dangers of distracted driving. awards. Amy O’Leary A.G. Sulzberger Technology Reporter Metro Assistant Editor Worked as an editor, producer, Worked on Continuous News, Times reporter and manager in her seven Topics, and Video before joining the years at The Times. Her work has City Room blog. Opened the Kansas been nominated for three Emmy City bureau to expand coverage of the awards, and won both a Loeb and Midwest. Knight-Batten award. Andrew Phelps Elena Gianni Mobile Assistant Editor User Experience Designer Worked in radio, television and print, Design innovation consultant with and covered media for a digital a background in engineering and startup. Spearheaded the launch media studies. Worked on the NYT5 of Today’s Paper, and led a project redesign, conducting research and to enhance the breaking news prototyping interactions. experience on mobile devices. Charles Duhigg Louise Story Business Reporter Investigations Reporter Harvard M.B.A., former founder Yale M.B.A. Former media reporter. and C.E.O. of SWPA Education Covered Wall Street during the Management. Part of the team that financial crisis, anchored Times video wrote the Pulitzer-winning “The show, and business correspondent on iEconomy” series. “The Takeaway” Ben Peskoe Jon Galinsky Strategy Manager Strategy Manager Wrote presentation to NYT Board of Managing Editor of Williams College Directors that recommended building newspaper. Interned at a newspaper NYT Now, Opinion and Cooking in Ethiopia. Led the strategy team’s products. planning for selling our digital subscriptions in 2014. Ian FisherAdvisers Larry Ingrassia Assistant Managing Editor Deputy Managing Editor 9

We Interviewed: The New York Times: AJ Chavar, Al Ming, Alex Hardiman, Alex MacCallum, Alex Minkow, Alexis Lloyd, Allen Tan, Amanda Cox, Amy Harmon, Andrew Keh, Andrew Kueneman, Andrew Rosenthal, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Andy Wright, Anh Dang, Ann Derry, Annie Lowrey, Ariane Bernard, Aron Pilhofer, Arthur Sulzberger, Ashley Southall, Ashwin Seshagiri, Barbara De Wilde, Ben French, Ben Koski, Ben Monnie, Bill Brink, Bill Carter, Bill Schmidt, Blake Wilson, Boris Chen, Brad Kagawa, Brian Ham- man, Brian Murphy, Bruce Headlam, C.J. Chivers, Carl Hulse, Carolyn Ryan, Catrin Einhorn, Chad Ghastin, Cheryl Yau, Chris Wiggins, Christine Haughney, Christine Hung, Christine Kay, Chrys Wu, Cliff Levy, Coral Davenport, Craig Hunter, Cynthia Collins, Damien Cave, Damon Darlin, Dan Watkin, Dana Canedy, Danielle Mattoon, Danielle Rhodes Ha, David Carr, David Gelles, David Leonhardt, David Perpich, David Scull, Dean Baquet, Dean Chang, Dean Murphy, Deborah Acosta, Deborah Needleman, Deborah Sontag, Denise Warren, Desiree Shoe, Eileen Murphy, Elizabeth Rosenthal, Elliot Malkin, Emily Rueb, Eric Lipton, Erik Hinton, Erik Piepenburg, Ethan Bronner, Evan Sandhaus, Gabe Johnson, Geoff Isenman, Gerry Marzorati, Gina Kolata, Ginger Thompson, Glenn Kramon, Hamilton Boardman, Hannah Farfield, Heather Murphy, Hugh Mandeville, Hugo Lindgren, Ian Adelman, Ian Fisher, Jacky Myint, James Estrin, James Robinson, Jamie Abir, Jan Hoffman, Janet Elder, Jason Spingarn-Koff, Jason Stallman, Jeff Marcus, Jenna Wortham, Jennifer Parrucci, Jennifer Steinhauer, Jeremy Peters, Jill Abramson, Jim Boehmer, Jim Dao, Jim Dryfoos, Jim Glanz, Jim Rutenberg, Joan Huang, Jodi Kantor, Joe Kahn, John Geddes, John Geraci, John Niedermeyer, John Schwartz, Jon Huang, Jon Kelly, Jonathan Ellis, Jonathan Martin, Jonathan Weisman, Joseph Burgess, Josh Haner, Josh Williams, Julie Bloom, Julie Bosman, Justin Stile, Kim Severson, KJ Dell’Antonia, Kristi Reilly, Laura Chang, Laura Holson, Lauren Kern, Lawrence Ingrassia, Leslie Kaufman, Lexi Mainland, Libby Gery, Libby Rosenthal, Marc Frons, Marc Lavalle, Margaret Sullivan, Mark Bittman, Mark Mazetti, Mark Silver, Mark Thompson, Martin Nisenholtz, Mary Suh, Matt Apuzzo, Matt Boggie, Matt Erikson, Matt Purdy, Matthew Boggie, Meaghan Looram, Meghan Louttit, Meredith Levien, Michael Corkery, Michael Dewar, Michael Golden, Michael Greenspon, Michael Luo, Michael Schmidt, Michael Shear, Michael Slackman, Michele McNally, Mike McIntire, Mike Zimablist, Monica Davey, Monica Drake, Nancy Donaldson, Nathan Ashby-Kuhlman, Nick Bilton, Nick Kristof, Nicole Breskin, Noam Cohen, Pamela Paul, Patrick La- Forge, Paul Smurl, Paul Werdel, Paul Yorke, Peter Baker, Peter Lattman, Peter Renz, Rachel Golden, Rajiv Pant, Rajiv Pant, Rebecca Corbett, Rebecca Howard, Rebecca Ruiz, Renda Morton, Rich Meislin, Rob Mackey, Roland Caputo, Sam Dolnick, Sam Manchester, Sam Sifton, Samantha Henig, Santiago Alfonso-Lord, Sarah Cohen, Sewell Chan, Shane Murray, Shayla Harris, Sheryle Stolberg, Shreeya Sinha, Stephanie Saul, Steve Duenes, Steven Rocker, Susan Chira, Susan Edgerly, Susan Wessling, Tahir Khan, Tara Parker Pope, Tom Bodkin, Tom Carley, Tom Jolly, Tony Brancato, Tony Scott, Torben Brooks, Tyson Evans, Victoria Shannon, Walt Bogdanich, Wendell Jamieson, Will Bardeen, William Goss, Willie Rashbaum, Yasmin Namini, Zander Baron, Zena Bakarat. External: Brian Mcandrews, Adam Davidson, Adam Moss, Adam Orme, Al Anstey, Alex How- ard, Alexis Madrigal, Ali Gharib, Ali Velshi, Amanda Michel, Amanda Zamora, Anders Fink, Andrea Shiah, Andrew Fitzgerald, Andrew Ginsburg, Andrew Jaspan, Ann Mack, Anna Bryant, Annie Wamke, Anthea Watson-Strong, Ben Leher, Bob Pittman, Braxton Mckee, Brianna Cotter, Chris Anderson, Chris Cunningham, Chris Mckee , Christina Cacioppo, Dan Collarusso, Dani- elle Gould, Dave Kliman, Dave Morgan, David Callaway, David Gehring, David Kenny, Dayna Grayson, Don Graham, Doreen Lorenzo, Eddie Kim, Eilidh Dickson, Elisabeth Job, Ellen Rubeefalls, Ellena Lee, Emily Brill, Enrique Acevdeo, Esther Dyson, Ethan Zuckerman, Fabio, Farhan Zafar, Gabe Dance, Gary Portuesi, Gideon Lichfield, Henry Abbott, Henry Blodget, Herb Kim, Jacek Barcikowski, Jacob Weisberg, Jake Levine, James Bennett, Jane Fritsch, Janet Camp, Jed Alpert, Jeremy Tarling, Jesse Shapsins, Jigar Mehta, John Lee, Josh Cohen, Josh Miller, Josh Quittner, Joshua Noble, Judy Winitzer, Julia Thompkins, Justin Smith, Kate Lee, Ken Lerer, Ken Loveless, Kevin Delaney, Laura Evans, Libby Brittain, Lina Srivastava, Ludwig Siegele, Magid Abraham, Mahira Chishty, Marcus Mckee, Mark Allen, Matt Mullin, Matt Singer, Mayo Nissen, Megan White, Meghan Peters, Michael Lebowitz, Michael Wertheim, Miriam Elder, Nick Beim, Norman Pollack, Paul Berry, Peter Goodman, Philippe Browning, Prascilla, Randi Zuckerberg, Ray Day, Richard Ii Hornos, Richard Luettgen, Rick Berke, Rishad Tobaccowala, Rob Grimshaw, Robert Krulwich, Robin Pembrooke, Robin Sloan, Ryan Jacoby, Siena Giraldi, Soraya Dorabi, Sravanthi Agrawal, Steve Brill, Stine Hoeck Forsberg, Susan Taing, Tim Carmody, Tom Conrad, Tony Haile, Vadim Lauruskik, Valerie Streit, Van- essa Arantes Nuzzo, Vivian Schiller, Wesley Morris, Zach Seward, Zach Wise.10 Executive Summary

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A User’s Guide to This ReportIn the pages that follow, you will find a brief discus- we’ve used are each representative of a dozen orsion of our competitors and the disruptive forces more conversations; they’re not outliers. Many arethat have taken hold of our industry. anonymous — not ideal, but essential to encourag- ing frank conversation. The rest of the report is in two chapters — GrowingOur Audience and Strengthening Our Newsrroom — As much as possible we’ve distilled informationthat flesh out the themes in this executive summary, into charts and graphs. We have also included side-with more detail, context and specific recommen- bars to explore topics and share key insights fromdations, based on our reporting inside and outside our reporting.the building. We offer long-term goals and somepossible short-term steps to get there. In nearly every case, the questions we explore aremore important than the solutions we offer. Andthere can be legitimate debate around the best solu-tions to many of them. We have done our best not to overwhelm read-ers with our reporting. We’ve attached appendicesthat list all the people we’ve interviewed. The quotes12 Executive Summary

Disruption: A Quick OverviewOf The Competitive LandscapeVox Media’s Chicago office. Vox surpassed The Wall Street Journal in total digital readership in 2013. 13

News in the News: Know More, which took just three weeks to becomeA Busy Six Months the company’s biggest blog. In March, the company opened an outpost in Manhattan, called WPNYC, to attract top digital talent. “The thing about the site isAs a reminder of just how rapidly new players are that it’s a very classic legacy media site — a repre-disrupting our business, consider what has hap- sentation of the print medium in digital,” said Thepened in the six months since our group’s work be- Post’s Greg Franczyk. “We’re shifting the paradigmgan. Not long ago, it would have been hard to imag- to designing a website that works for our users andine The Washington Post controlled by anyone but building the technology that meets the need.”the Graham family. Now we are waiting to see what Digital-first is the new mantra from the old guard.Jeff Bezos does to remake this storied institution. The Financial Times and USA Today have made the“Even if the Post lost $100 million a year,” wrote switch, and The Journal has pledged to join thoseFarhad Manjoo, “Bezos’ personal fortune could fund ranks, staffing a new “real-time news desk” with 60it for 252 years.” people and an “audience-engagement desk” withSoon after Bezos bought the Post for $250 million, social-media editors and analytics specialists.Pierre Omidyar, the eBay co-founder, pledged $250 One of the largest chains of local newspapers inmillion to create First Look Media, A relentless run the United States, which tellinglya hybrid operation with a nonprofit renamed itself Digital First Media,newsroom and for-profit technol- of headlines from announced Project Unbolt, explain-ogy company. It hired well-known new and old ing that its goal is “to take a massivejournalists like Glenn Greenwald wrench to the culture and work-and Laura Poitras to launch several media companies. flow of our newsrooms and unboltdigital magazines with top-notch them,” since “newsrooms are stilldata analysts, visual designers and largely print newsrooms with digi-technologists. “Our goal is to experiment, innovate tal operations ‘bolted on.’”and overcome existing obstacles — to make it easier And The San Francisco Chronicle launched “anfor journalists to deliver the transformative stories off-site startup-style incubator.” As Audrey Cooper,we all need,” Omidyar said in his announcement. the managing editor, explained, “We hope to even-Other digital media companies poured more tually get to the point where instead of being a news-money into the news business, luring talent from paper company that produces websites, we think ofestablished players. Vox Media — which raised an- ourselves as a digital company that also produces aother $40 million in October — wooed Ezra Klein newspaper. Unless you flip that switch, I don’t thinkfrom The Post. Yahoo hired David Pogue to create a any newspaper will be truly successful at negotiatingconsumer tech vertical and signed up Katie Couric the digital switchover.”to become a “global anchor.” Kara Swisher and Walt The Times has hardly been idle, of course. OverMossberg left the Journal to launch Re/code. the last six months, the company unveiled a majorBuzzFeed and Upworthy continued their relent- redesign of NYTimes.com, the first in seven years.less growth while making new investments in qual- We launched The International New York Times.ity journalism. And Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn We pushed into the new world of native advertisingwaded deeper into the journalism business by hiring (as did Hearst, The Post, BBC, The Guardian andeditors and announcing new products, like Face- The Wall Street Journal). And we completed the salebook’s Paper, aimed at news consumers. of The Boston Globe to John Henry, ushering in anTraditional media outlets were just as active. The era in which The New York Times is the Times Com-Washington Post started the Upworthy-inspired pany’s only business.14 Executive Summary | Competitive Landscape

OCTOBER Washington Post closes sale to Jeff Bezos for $250 million. Pierre Omidyar pledges $250 million to a new digital-first venture, First Look Media. Times Co. closes sale of The Boston Globe to John Henry for $70 million. Vox Media raises $40 million in venture capital. The Post launches Upworthy-inspired Know More, which takes only three weeks to become the company’s biggest blog.NOVEMBER Yahoo hires a series of high-profile journalists, including David Pogue and Katie Couric. Digital First Media rolls out metered paywalls for all 75 of its Media News and Journal Register sites.DECEMBER The Journal launches an “audience engagement team,” combining social-media and analytics experts. An interactive news app — not an article — becomes The Times’s most popular story of all time. BuzzFeed expands its foreign and investigative reporting staff.JANUARY Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg leave the Journal to launch Re/code. Ezra Klein leaves The Post to join Vox Media. Marty Baron announces major new digital initiatives at The Post, including a breaking- news desk. The Wall Street Journal creates a digital-first “real-time news desk.” Digital First Media announces Project Unbolt. Facebook introduces Paper, a Flipboard-like mobile news-reading app. San Francisco Chronicle launches “an off-site startup-style incubator.” Business Insider surpasses The Journal in combined digital audience. The Huffington Post announced a global partnership with a think tank at Davos.FEBRUARY Upworthy announces “attention minutes” as its new algorithm for measuring reader engagement. ProPublica begins selling data gathered from its reporting projects in the ProPublica Data Store.MARCH The Post launches WPNYC, a Manhattan outpost for design and development. Vice News launched with a staff of roughly 100 journalists. The new FiveThirtyEight is unveiled. NYT Now, Cooking and The Upshot are prepared for launch. 15

What Is Disruption?Disruption is a predictable pattern across many in- by attacking the strongest incumbent — The Newdustries in which fledgling companies use new tech- York Times. How does disruption work? Should wenology to offer cheaper and inferior alternatives to be defending our position, or disrupting ourselves?products sold by established players (think Toyota And can’t we just dismiss the BuzzFeeds of thetaking on Detroit decades ago). Today, a pack of world, with their listicles and cat videos?news startups are hoping to “disrupt” our industry Here’s a quick primer on the disruption cycle:1. Incumbents treat innovation as a series of incre- QUALITY sustaining innovations minimum customermental improvements. They focus on improving thequality of their premium products to sustain their needcurrent business model. TIME For The Times, a sustaining innovation might be“Snowfall.” QUALITY minimum customer2. Disruptors introduce new products that, at first, idninsrouvpattiivoens needdo not seem like a threat. Their products are cheap-er, with poor quality — to begin with. TIME For BuzzFeed, a disruptive innovation might be QUALITY minimumsocial media distribution. customer3. Over time, disruptors improve their product, needusually by adapting a new technology. The flash-point comes when their products become “goodenough” for most customers. They are now poised to grow by taking marketshare from incumbents. TIMEHALLMARKS OF DISRUPTIVE INNOVATORS Introduced by an “outsider” Less expensive than existing products Targeting underserved or new markets Initially inferior to existing products Advanced by an enabling technology16 Executive Summary | Competitive Landscape

A CASE STUDY IN DISRUPTION: KODAK and mail copies to friends. When the inferior and cheaper digital productKodak and its film-based cameras were the classicincumbents: a traditional, respected company offer- became “good enough” for customers, it disrupteding a high-quality product to a mass market. the incumbent. Then came digital cameras. Film companies Digital cameras seemed poised to own the mar-laughed at the poor shutter speed and fuzzy images ket. Then came flip-phone cameras. They offeredof early digital cameras. even lower quality photos. And digital camera com- panies mocked their grainy images. But again, us- The photos weren’t great, but digital cameras bet- ers opted for a lesser product that was more conve-ter addressed the user’s primary need: to capture nient. They’d rather have a “good enough” cameraand share moments. It was easier and cheaper to in their phone then lug a better but bulky digitaltake a digital picture, download it onto your com- camera. When the flip-phone camera became “goodputer and email it to many people than it was to buy enough,” it disrupted the incumbent.film, print dozens of high quality photos at a shopThe first digital cameras weremocked for poor shutter speedand fuzzy images.Now, “Kodak memories” are adistant memory. What did youtake your last picture with?“Culturally, I think we have operated “The world of business really separatesas if we had the formula figured into two groups. Entrepreneurs who out, and it was all about optimizing, are disrupting the status quo arein its various constituent parts, the attackers. Large organizations areformula. Now it is about discovering defenders.” —Steve Case, CEO ofthe new formula.” — Satya Nadella, Revolution, and a founder of AOLMicrosoft’s new CEO 17

A Competitor Cheat Sheet KNOWN FOR BUZZFEED Aggressive social distribution Highly shareable content Founded by Jonah Peretti in 2006, BuzzFeed built a Experimental story forms huge audience by using data to help stories go viral. The company is known for rapidly experimenting KEY STATS with story formats and is now hiring journalists to move into traditional news coverage. 130M unique visitors $40M in 2013 revenue CIRCA KNOWN FOR Circa is a mobile news app that aggregates report- ing from a variety of sources and repackages each Bullet-point summaries story into running story threads for smartphones. Mobile push alerts The app allows users to follow ongoing stories and Allowing users to follow stories subscribe to alerts for updates. KEY STATS ESPN $3.4M in funding ESPN is expanding its digital offerings, with vid- eo and audio (live and on-demand), sports-relat- KNOWN FOR ed tools (fantasy football, score alerts) and sub- brands based on star journalists (Grantland with Mobile push alerts Bill Simmons, FiveThirtyEight with Nate Silver). User tools/service journalism “Pulling back the curtain” on FIRST LOOK MEDIA big stories First Look Media is a new digital journalism venture KEY STATS backed with $250 million from eBay co-founder Pierre Omidyar. It has recruited brand-name jour- 56M unique visitors nalists like Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Matt Taibbi to aggressively cover hard news. KNOWN FOR FLIPBOARD Brand-name journalists Developers on every desk Flipboard is a highly visual news aggregator designed for Single-topic digital magazines phones and tablets. Content is aggregated from a variety of publishers and grouped into themed collections. KEY STATS Readers can follow collections, topics or publications. $250M in funding guarantees;18 Executive Summary | Competitive Landscape $50M already invested About 20 veteran journalists KNOWN FOR Beautiful user interface Built on users’ social networks KEY STATS 90M users Raised $50M round; valued at $800M Third-largest driver of mobile traffic to NYT

THE GUARDIAN KNoWN FORThe Guardian is expanding its digital-only U.S. Promotion and outreachnewsroom, which now has approximately 60 “Comment Is Free” platformjournalists. It led early coverage of the Snowden Data visualizationsleaks, largely through the work of columnist GlennGreenwald. KEY STATSTHE HUFFINGTON POST Avg. 2013 non-U.S. audience: 27M (vs.17M for NYT)The Huffington Post, sold to AOL in 2011 for $315 mil- Avg. 2013 U.S. audience:lion, surged in popularity during the 2008 presidential 12M (vs. 33M for NYT)campaign. In addition to original reporting, the site pub-lishes the work of outside contributors and aggregates KNOWN FORcontent from The Times and other sources. Open commenting platformLINKEDIN Aggressive use of SEO and social mediaLinkedIn is a social network for professionals. It enteredpublishing in earnest through its acquisition of Pulse KEY STATSin 2013 and is building out its “Influencer” network ofcontributors who post original content. Avg. 2013 U.S. audience: 32M, reaching high of 40M inMEDIUM November (vs. 33M for NYT)Founded by former Twitter CEO Evan Williams, KNOWN FORMedium is an open publishing platform that allowsanyone to write and distribute content. Medium’s “Influencer” publishingeditorial team curates the best content into “col- platformlections.” Readers can follow collections and indi- Allowing users to follow topicsvidual writers. KEY STATSQUARTZ 65M unique U.S. visitors,Quartz is a business-news site owned by Atlantic Media 180M globallyand edited by Kevin Delaney, a former managing editor $1.5B in total revenue,at The Wall Street Journal. It operates a mobile-opti- $360M in advertisingmized website, rather than native apps, and drives audi-ence growth through daily email newsletters. KNOWN FOR Simple publishing platform Smart writers and editors Rich visual design KEY STATS Average 250K monthly users KNOWN FOR Chartbuilder tool for journalists Responsive design “Obsessions” in lieu of traditional beats or sections KEY STATS 5M unique visitors 50K daily email subscribers 19

VOX KNOWN FORVox Media operates a collection of vertical publi- Live bloggingcations, including SB Nation (sports), The Verge Visual story treatments(tech), Curbed (real estate), Polygon (gaming), Highly engaged communityRacked (fashion) and Eater (food). The companyrecently hired Ezra Klein to create Vox, a general- KEY STATSinterest news site. Raised $40M round in 2013YAHOO NEWS $200M valuation SB Nation has 40M uniqueYahoo is expanding its journalistic capacity by making visitorsbig hires. It released a smartphone app called YahooNews Digest that updates twice daily with the top eight KNOWN FORnews stories from around the web. High-profile journalism hires Huge traffic to news content Newly released Digest app KEY STATS 65M unique U.S. visitors, 180M globally $1.5B in total revenue, $360M in advertising20 Executive Summary | Competitive Landscape

Chapter 1GrowingOur Audience Innovation  March 24, 2014

22 Growing Our Audience |

Introduction of the newsroom but as the responsibility of every editor and reporter. They adopt this approach be-Long ago, we decided to go to extraordinary lengths cause the work happens story by story and platformto get our journalism into the hands of as many by platform, requiring creativity and editorial judg-readers as possible. ment. These efforts can be compared to using an en- gaging lede, compelling headline, or gripping photo Each night, we printed our best work. Then weloaded it onto trucks to drive it to cities and towns. TOUGH TRENDSThen we enlisted kids to bike from house to houseto deliver our papers to readers’ doorsteps. For non- Some key measures of traffic and engagement point to ansubscribers, we dropped off bundles of papers at inescapable truth: The Times needs to work harder to reach andcorner stores and newspaper racks, and painstak- hold onto readers.ingly tracked sales to see where more copies wereneeded. Home Page Visitors: Millions 160 We take this work for granted now, but our home 2011 2012 140delivery and single-sales efforts represented one ofthe most sophisticated consumer-outreach opera- 120tions in history. But when the time came to put ourjournalism on the web, we adopted a much more 100passive approach. We published stories on our homepage and assumed that most people would come to 80us. 80 2013 The realities of a cluttered Internet and distractedmobile world now require us to make even more of Page Views: Millionsan effort to get our journalism to readers. Perhaps 15because the path forward is not clear and requiresvery different skills, we are putting less effort into 10reaching readers’ digital doorsteps than we ever didin reaching their physical doorsteps. MAY 2012 JAN 2013 5 This effort to reach more readers — known as Au- 0dience Development — is where our competitors are MAY 2013pushing ahead of us. Time Spent: JAN 2013 Minutes Audience Development is the work of expanding 40our loyal and engaged audience. It is about getting MAY 2012more people to read more of our journalism. The iPhone App Active Users: 35work can be broken down into steps like discovery(how we package and distribute our journalism), JAN 2013 30promotion (how we call attention to our journalism)and connection (how we create a two-way relation- 25ship with readers that deepens their loyalty). 20 Audience Development needs to be a goal for the 15whole company. But the newsroom, in particular, MAY 2013must seize a leadership position. Millions At our new and traditional competitors, Audience 1Development is seen not just as the responsibility 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 JAN 2014 23

to draw readers into a story. to tens of millions of readers. Here, too, we are lag- “The hardest part for me has been the realization ging our competitors.that you don’t automatically get an audience,” said Because we are journalists, we tend to look at ourJanine Gibson, editor-in-chief of The Guardian’s competitors through the lens of content rather thanwebsite. “For someone with a print background, strategy. But BuzzFeed, Huffington Post and USAyou’re accustomed to the fact that if it makes the edi- Today are not succeeding simply because of lists,tor’s cut ­— gets into the paper — you’re going to find quizzes, celebrity photos and sports coverage. Theyan audience. It’s entirely the other way around as a are succeeding because of their sophisticated social,digital journalist. The realization that you have to go search and community-building tools and strate-find your audience ­— they’re not going to just come gies, and often in spite of their content.and read it — has been transformative.” “At The New York Times, far too often for writers The need is urgent. Our home page has been our and editors the story is done when you hit publish,”main tool for getting our journalism to readers, said Paul Berry, who helped found The Huffingtonbut its impact is waning. Only a third of our read- Post. “At Huffington Post, the article begins its lifeers ever visit it. And those who do visit are spending when you hit publish.”less time: page views and minutes spent per readerdropped by double-digit percentages last year. The Guardian is just one example of a traditional competitor that has adopted digital best practices in Readers are finding and engaging with our jour- Audience Development to drive rapid growth, allow-nalism in vastly different ways. More readers ex- ing it to close in on our position as the world’s best-pect us to find them on Twitter and Facebook, and read quality newspaper. USA Today has put suchthrough email and phone alerts. But the newsroom practices at the heart of its reorganization. And Thepays less attention to these platforms, even though Wall Street Journal recently created a new “audi-they offer our main, and sometimes only, channels ence-engagement team,” bringing social editors andREACHING READERSThe Times has worked hard since its earliest days to turnoccasional readers into loyal subscribers.24 Growing Our Audience |

data scientists together in the newsroom. needed to be fully committed to working with the “I tell most reporters, ‘Three percent of the people business side to grow our audience.who want to see your work are seeing it,’” said a top Audience Development is not a task we shouldeditor at The Washington Post. “So if we can get that view as a chore – the opportunities are truly excit-to even 4.5 percent, it’s worth the effort, it’s worth ing. Imagine coming back from an unplugged vaca-the struggle.” tion and having the best pieces you missed waiting for you. Or strolling through Rome and having an But at The Times, discovery, promotion and en- article on the best museums pop up on your phone.gagement have been pushed to the margins, typical- Or watching a year-old story go viral on social. Orly left to our business-side colleagues or handed to having Science Times become a lively platform forsmall teams in the newsroom. The business side still expert debate.has a major role to play, but the newsroom needs toclaim its seat at the table because packaging, pro- There is no single solution like home delivery thatmoting and sharing our journalism requires edito- will solve the challenges of digital distribution. Butrial oversight. our competitors have been experimenting aggres- sively, and some best practices have emerged that This effort needs to be unified under a single lead- we will share in the following pages. We shoulder. We recommend hiring a head of Audience De- track them closely, and adopt those that meet ourvelopment who works in the newsroom and collabo- standards. And we should unleash the creativity ofrates with a counterpart on the business side. our staff by experimenting quickly and constantly to discover next-generation solutions. Indeed, in recent months, the most qualified can-didate for such a position on the business side, Mi- “If The New York Times could get this right —chael Wertheim, the former head of promotion for could reach the right audiences for all its content —Upworthy, turned down the job. He explained that it would change the world,” said Wertheim.for anyone in that role to succeed, the newsroomWhat Are We Trying to Do?OUR GOAL NON- DRIVE REPEAT REGISTERED SUBSCRIBER LOYALIST READER BY READER READERThere are many good ideas forinnovation in the newsroom,but we focused on those thatwill help us find more readersfor more of our journalism.THE CURRENT QUALITY JOURNALISMNEWSROOMAPPROACHThe main newsroom strategyfor attracting more readersis to produce excellentjournalism.OUR FOCUS PROMOTION, DISTRIBUTION TAGGING, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATIONIn this report, we exploredadditional ideas to attract BREAKING NEWS, VIRAL HITS, PACKAGESnew readers and deepen DISCOVERY, PERSONALIZATION, EMAILour connection with loyal CONNECTION, EVENTSsubscribers. READER CONTRIBUTIONS 25

Our Proposals, In BriefWe recognize that “audience development” can eas- 1. DISCOVERYily be dismissed as one of those “sounds-good-in-theory” notions. So we’ve packed a lot into the fol- Improving technology provides us with more andlowing pages to show how it works in practice. We’ll better tools to ensure that we get our work in frontprovide the context for why these strategies deserve of the right readers at the right place and at the rightour attention, explain our current approach, assess time. But we still ask too much of readers — theythe competitive landscape and address concerns. must navigate a website and apps that are modeledWe’ll also offer a few key recommendations and a on our print structure. We need to think more aboutproposed experiment for each area. However, the resurfacing evergreen content, organizing and pack-details of any specific suggestion matter less than aging our work in more useful ways and pushing rel-the underlying questions. Our goal is to start a dis- evant content to readers. And to power these efforts,cussion. we should invest more in the unglamorous but es- sential work of tagging and structuring data.Our readers’ habits are changing faster than ever. How can we 2. PROMOTIONmake sure our news is reaching them in the digital age? We need to be better advocates of our own work. This means creating newsroom structures to make sure our most important work has maximum readership and impact. And it means identifying and sharing best practices at the ground level, and encouraging reporters and editors to promote their stories. In addition, we must take the process of optimization, for search and social, more seriously and ensure we are updating our tools and workflow along with our changing needs. 3.CONNECTION Our readers are perhaps our greatest untapped re- source. Deepening our connection with them both online and offline is critical in a world where content so often reaches its broadest audience on the backs of other readers. And many readers have come to expect a two-way relationship with us, so they can engage with our journalism and our journalists. This means the newsroom as a whole must take the reins in pursuing user-generated content, events and other forms of engagement in a way that reflects our standards and values.26 Growing Our Audience |

1DiscoveryThe Times produces more than 300 URLs every day. connecting with readers is our news alert system,Because of this bounty, readers easily miss stories which now reaches as many as 13.5 million people,and features. This has long been true for readers about a dozen times our print subscriber base.who come to our home page, because of limited realestate and constantly shifting presentation. This is Here are four opportunities for getting more read-also true on our mobile apps, where a tiny screen ers for the work we’re already producing, with amakes it even harder to sift through our offerings. proposed experiment for each idea to make it moreThe readers who don’t come to us at all — and in- concrete.stead expect us to reach them through social mediaand our alerts — have even less of an appreciation SOCIAL POWERof the richness of our work. It’s not just The Times. The entire digital media industry is seeing A more reader-centric approach to packaging and a big shift in behavior. Reader visits to home pages are decliningsurfacing our journalism offers us a huge opportu- while traffic from social media is rising. (S­ ource: BuzzFeed)nity to extend our reach. Exploiting better web andmobile tools will also help us get each story to every Home Page Social Referrals % of Visitorsreader who might want to see it. JAN 2013 100 80 We need to make better use of these tools and 60tactics because the current structures for organiz- 40ing our digital journalism, many of which are based 20on the traditions and limitations of print, are losing 0potency. Traffic to the home page has been declin-ing, month after month, for years. Traffic to sec- DEC 2013tion fronts is negligible. Traffic on our mobile apps,which are mostly downstream replicas of our home Total Internet traffic by type of site.page and section fronts, has declined as well. Portals Social One great example of the power of a new tool for Search Facebook News Sites (1.5%) Other 27

Opportunity:EvergreenOn Oscar night, The Times tweeted a 161-year-old recipes each week. The new Cooking product betterstory about Solomon Northup, whose memoir was reflects the fact that recipes are timeless and best or-the basis for “12 Years a Slave.” After it started going ganized in other ways: by meal, ingredients, seasonviral on social media, Gawker pounced, and quickly and our critics’ favorites.fashioned a story based on excerpts from our piece.It ended up being one of their best-read items of the The opportunities are not limited to service jour-year. But little of that traffic came to us. nalism. We can be both a daily newsletter and a li- brary — offering news every day, as well as providing In a digital world, our rich archive offers one of context, relevance and timeless works of journalism.our clearest advantages over new competitors. As ofthe printing of this report, we have 14,723,933 ar- In breaking news and long-running stories, read-ticles, dating back to 1851, that can be resurfaced in ers can struggle to quickly get up to speed or to un-useful or timely ways. But we rarely think to mine derstand why something matters. Many of our com-our archive, largely because we are so focused on petitors are tackling this challenge, just as we didnews and new features. with Times Topics. “You have a huge advantage,” said Henry Blodget, “Journalists are better than ever at telling peoplethe founder of Business Insider. “You have a tre- what’s happening, but not nearly good enough atmendous amount of high-quality content that you giving them the crucial contextual information nec-have a perpetual license to.” essary to understand what’s happened,” said Ezra Klein, in announcing his new venture at Vox Media. The Cooking team is providing a fresh reminder “We treat the emphasis on the newness of informa-of our treasure trove of evergreen content. For de- tion as an important virtue rather than a painfulcades, we published and promoted a handful of new compromise.”GAWKEREDWhen this 161-year-old Times story startedgoing viral on Oscar night, Gawker did whatGawker does —it repackaged our content andwon huge traffic gains.28 Growing Our Audience | Discovery

Experiment: One possible solution, envisioned by Ben KoskiCulture Guides and Erik Hinton of our Interactive News team, is to add landing pages for our cultural content that are Our committee ran a study of article readership more like guides.during the last six months of 2013. Arts and culturestories were among those that were consistently These pages would supplement, not replace, ourread long after their publication dates, even though existing arts pages. Optimized for search and social,they can be difficult to find once they are more than these guides would serve the reader who wants toa few days old. use us as a more timeless resource. A new approach would be to take cultural and life- The best opportunities are in areas where Thestyle content — about books, museums, food, the- Times has comprehensive coverage, where informa-ater — and organize it more by relevance than by tion doesn’t need to be updated regularly, and wherepublication date. competitors haven’t saturated the market. For now, museums, books and theater fit that description. Erik Piepenburg, the web producer for theater, Travel and music would present significantly morenoted that visitors coming to us for the “Wicked” hurdles.theater review can’t easily find it because we re-viewed it a long time ago. But that review is still rel- “So far, there’s been much enthusiasm from theevant to the many readers who are considering buy- desks,” said Koski. “But getting these on the officialing tickets this week. agenda to be built and made real is an ongoing chal- lenge. It’s hard for ideas like these to compete with enterprise, major events and story work.”GIFTS THAT KEEP % OF TOTAL VIEWSON GIVING 40% 30%Traffic on most of our storiesfalls dramatically after the first 20%day they’re published. 10% 1 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 DAYSBut enterprise and feature PAGE VIEWSstories can have long lives. 8000For example, Libby Rosenthal’s 6000colonoscopy story from last 4000year, below, attracted new 2000readers months after it waspublished. 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 DAYS 1 29

THE ART OF CURATION The Times dominates coverage of books, museums and theater. And the evergreen nature of those subjects makes them a natural for being repackaged as culture guides. Here are two proposals from the Interactive News department.30 Growing Our Audience | Discovery

Best Practices In ExperimentingIf you were to ask most people in the newsroom Unlike a printed newspaper (which is polished toabout how The New York Times experiments, they near-perfection and “launched” once a day), a digitalmight talk about a new story format like “Snowfall” experiment should be released quickly and refinedor a recent crowdsourcing effort like “Paying Till It through a cycle of continuous improvement —­ mea-Hurts.” But “experimentation” is about much more suring performance, studying results, shutteringthan simply trying something new. losers and building on winners. The Verge, for ex- ample, redesigned its home page 53 times in two Real experimentation is about adopting a rigor- years. We must push back against our perfectionistous, scientific method for proving new concepts and impulses. Though our journalism always needs toconstantly tweaking them to be as successful as pos- be polished, our other efforts can have some roughsible. This is how every major digital innovator — in- edges as we look for new ways to reach our readers.cluding Google and Amazon — works today. KEY EXPERIMENTS IN PROGRESS: NYT Now: Our first experiment in packaging news specifically for a mobile audience. NY Today: An ongoing experiment to assess read- ers’ appetite for tip sheets. Cooking: An experiment to build a world-class service-journalism app, leveraging the archive. Watching: An experiment in curating a news feed on our homepage. NYT Now & Watching. 31

A LIST OF BEST PRACTICES FOR EXPERIMENTATION:Launch efforts quickly, then iterate. We often Kill off mediocre efforts. To free up resources forhold back stories for publication, as we should, new initiatives, we need to be quicker and smart-because they’re “not quite there yet.” Outside our er about pulling resources from efforts that aren’tjournalism, though, we can adopt the “minimal working. And we must do it in a way that is trans-viable product” model, which calls for launching parent so that people understand the reasons be-something in a more basic form so that we can hind the decision, so that they will be willing tostart getting feedback from users and improve it experiment again.over time. Plan for “version 2.0” and beyond. Often, the re-Set goals and track progress. Every new project source plan for new projects stops at launch. Asshould be launched with a specific goal and met- we learn from readers about what is working andric for success. In many cases, our main goal is not working, we have to continue our efforts tohigh-quality journalism. But readership and en- refine and develop our new initiatives.gagement are usually important, too. All man-agers should be clear on what a new initiative is Make it easier to launch an experiment than toaiming to accomplish. Editors in charge of exper- block one. At many companies, people are ableiments should track their progress in real time. to test ideas on a small percentage of users with mid-level approval. Elsewhere, you must write aReward experimentation. Currently, the risk of memo about why an experiment should not hap-failing greatly outweighs the reward of succeed- pen in order to block it. Our journalistic stan-ing at The Times. We must reward people who dards always need to be protected, but traditionshow initiative, even when their experiments fail. alone shouldn’t be a justification for blocking ex-Share lessons from both successes and failures. periments.We need to do a better job of communicating our testING, TESTINGdigital goals, and sharing what we know aboutbest practices to achieve them. No project should Earlier this year, the newsroom analytics team conducted anbe declared a success, or shuttered, without a de- “A/B Test” on a science article, showing different headlinesbrief on what we’ve learned, so that we can apply and photos to readers. Of the options below, number threethose insights more broadly. performed best. More important, it showed that this kind of test is possible — and that The Times should use it as another tool to drive traffic to our journalism. 1 2 3 4The Color Of Pressure The Color Of Pressure The Big Squeeze The Big Squeeze32 Growing Our Audience | Discovery

Opportunity:PackagingReaders who visit our site for the first time natu- Andrew Phelps created a Flipboard magazine of ourrally might assume that if they click on “New York,” most important obits of the year and it became thethey’re likely to find restaurant reviews, theater re- best-read collection in the history of the platform.views, local sports coverage, museum coverage or Other colleagues have tackled similar projects to re-real estate coverage. That assumption would be package our work. But because our systems are dif-wrong, of course. ficult for them experiment on, they usually turn to Flipboard, Pinterest and other sites. This is but one example of the many opportuni-ties we have for repackaging our content so that it’s “It’s crazy that we’re doing this on a third-partymore useful, relevant and shareable for readers. platform and letting them reap many of the bene- fits,” said a senior digital editor. We can point to successes already. On a whim,NOTABLE EXPERIMENTS Flipboard has created a tool that lets readers make collections with content on their app, including stories from The Times.Millions of people flipped through this collection of New YorkTimes obits, developed on a whim by Andrew Phelps. 33

Experiment: types of collections are created almost exclusivelyCollections off-site, on Flipboard.Our committee ran a couple of experiments with The key to making Collections scalable is for therepackaging and found that even old content can newsroom to introduce a widget-like tool that anygenerate significant traffic without ever appearing reporter or editor could use to drag and drop storieson the home page. and photos. (The R&D department and, more re- cently, New Products have already built such tools.) The first was a page featuring a collection of ninevideos related to love, chosen from our archives by Because Collections are created with content thatthe weddings editor, for Valentine’s Day. The sec- has already been vetted and published, they requireond was a collection of Nick Kristof articles and col- few resources and limited oversight.umns from the archives about sex trafficking. Wecreated no new articles, only new packaging. We If our Collection tool were intuitive and easy toexplicitly requested that they be kept off the home use, we could encourage readers to drag and droppage and then we launched a strategic campaign to a group of stories into their own collections, whichpromote the pages elsewhere. The result? Both were they could then share. This is an opportunity to em-huge hits, exclusively because our readers shared power readers to make something on our site withthem on social. The video unit, eager to repeat those less risk to our brand.wins, is already pushing to create a template. TIMELY AND TIMELESS Sasha Koren, our social and community editor,said these collections forced a change in thinking For Valentine’s Day, we worked with our weddings editor and otherabout what’s new. “Maybe it’s, ‘what’s new to some- colleagues around the building to repackage nine videos from ourone now,’” Koren said. “It’s still timely, it’s still rel- archives. The result: a big hit with readers.evant to this moment, it’s not dated.” Collections would allow us to curate or automati-cally group our content in many different ways: bysection, topic, byline, etc. They can be used to puta new frame around old content and connect thedots between pieces written over time in a way thatday-to-day coverage typically does not. A Collections format is being developed byProduct and Design to improve our ability to or-ganize content in ways that are more intuitive anduseful. The newsroom should support that work andconsider creating a tool for reporters, web produc-ers, video journalists and editors — and eventuallyreaders — to create collections and repackage ourcontent in ways beyond the usual news format. For example, we could package stories aboutPutin’s tightening grip on Russia, or the best round-up of climate-science explainers, or service piecesabout the science of sleep, or all the four-star res-taurant reviews from the last year. Currently, these34 Growing Our Audience | Discovery

New Again (And Popular)Pub Date Article Page Views The “Inside the Brothels” collection that we devel- oped with Nick Kristof’s help provides a case studyAPR 14, 1996 Children For Sale 37,803 in how, without too much effort, we can repackageJAN 21, 2004 Bargaining For Freedom 29,238 material in our archives and make it relevant again.MAR 26, 2006 A Woman Without [...] 21,962APR 22, 2007 The 21st Century Slave [...] 14,075 Until we published “Inside the Brothels,” theNOV 18, 2010 A Woman. A Prostitute. [...] 33,240 seven stories in the collection had not drawn anyMAR 31, 2012 Sex Trafficking Comes [...] 24,255 traffic in years. But, as the chart at bottom leftOCT 12, 2013 From the Brothels [...] 25,230 shows, all the stories saw a spike in visits after be- Collection Page 282,303 ing repackaged, with several getting more traffic TOTAL 468,106 than a typical new story on the day it’s published. NEW TRAFFIC “Inside the Brothels” rose to the No. 8 most- viewed article on launch day, and it sustained its traffic several days longer than typical daily stories. Over six days, the traffic to the collection page and the associated articles totaled 468,106 page views. Very few articles from a typical day’s paper will garner this much traffic in a month. ENGAGED READERS Articles in the “Inside the Brothels” collection were among those that readers spent the most time with that day. The 1996 Kristof article in our collection was third on this list, with the average user spending 2 minutes, 35 seconds. THE RECIRCULATION EFFECT “Recirculation” refers to a story’s effectiveness in driving readers to other stories, as opposed to their leaving the site. On launch day, “Inside the Brothels” ranked No. 1 on the recirculation list. LESSONS LEARNED Evergreen content is appealing to readers if resurfaced in a way that is smart. Such work can find a large audience without home page attention. The newsroom can fall into old habits about ex- periments like this one, raising concerns about turf, quality control and precedents. One-offs are laborious, so we should focus on making such efforts replicable and scalable. 35

Balancing Act: One-offs vs. ReplicabilityThe surprising popularity of The Times dialect quiz clear. For example, the slideshow tool has become— the most popular piece of content in the paper’s one of our most popular features, the dashboard sys-history, with more than 21 million page views — tem has elevated our ability to respond to breakingprompted weeks of internal discussions about ways news, and our blog platforms helped train an entireto build on that remarkable success. generation of Times reporters and editors to writeBut over at BuzzFeed, they were busy perfecting for the web. “It’s actually been a long time since wea template so they could pump out quiz after quiz had platform innovation on that scale,” said Nathanafter quiz. “We wanted to have interactive games,” Ashby-Kuhlman.explained one BuzzFeed editor, “but not have the Several digital leaders in the newsroom said theydevelopers build them every time, so that we could believe we need to reprioritize the kind of incremen-experiment freely.” tal improvements that can elevate the whole reportThis contrast helps illustrate one of the biggest and allow our journalists to, for example, build theirobstacles to our digital success. We own collections from our archives.have a tendency to pour resources Tools, templates “We’ve reached a point now whereinto big one-time projects and work and permanent platform innovation is a require-through the one-time fixes needed fixes can elevate ment,” said one editor.to create them, and overlook the lessglamorous work of creating tools, We also need to prioritize sustain- able solutions over time-consumingthe whole report.templates and permanent fixes that hacks, short-term fixes and work- arounds to problems that emergecumulatively can have a bigger im-pact by saving our digital journalists repeatedly, sometimes daily. Fortime and elevating the whole report. We greatly un- example, platform editors spend hours on Sundaydervalue replicability. mornings trying to fix stories that don’t work onDriven in part by the success of Snowfall, we have mobile devices. They know the problems that willgone to extraordinary lengths in recent years to sup- emerge but are unable to get the Technology re-port huge single-story efforts. The ambitions of such sources to fix them. Since the newsroom does notprojects are central to our brand. But Graphics, In- control those resources, it is very difficult to priori-teractive, Design and Social are spending a dispro- tize even small changes that cause trouble day afterportionate amount of time on these labor-intensive day.one-offs. Meanwhile, we have repeatedly put off Our competitors, particularly digital-native ones,making the necessary improvements to allow our treat platform innovation as a core function. Voxgraphics to appear on mobile. and First Look Media have lured talent with theThat runs counter to the approach at so many of pitch that they have built the tools and templatesour digital competitors. “We are focused on build- to elevate journalists. That was the advantage thating tools to create Snowfalls everyday, and getting BuzzFeed C.E.O. Jonah Peretti cited in a recentthem as close to reporters as possible,” said Kevin company memo, saying that the company had spentDelaney, editor of Quartz, which is known for inno- years investing in formats, analytics, optimizationvative storytelling formats. “I’d rather have a Snow- and testing frameworks. “This is a massive invest-fall builder than a Snowfall.” ment that is very difficult to replicate,” he said.When we have created tools, the benefits are36 Growing Our Audience | Discovery

Opportunity:PersonalizationWe already personalize our content for individual ington Post, alter what readers see based on howreaders in subtle ways: a front-page story about they arrive on their sites. For example, they will lookNew York may be substituted for a National story, at data in real time to track which stories are draw-the global home page curates our news report with ing readers from Twitter, and then they show thosean international sensibility, and the iPad app grays same stories to other people who visit from Twitter.out the stories you’ve already read. This practice tends to keep them reading more sto- ries. Embracing personalization does not mean flip-ping a switch that gives different stories to every In the absence of newsroom input, the businessperson. Nor should it. Research shows that readers side has been leading our approach to personaliza-come to us in part to find out what we consider the tion.top stories of the day. Currently, our main tool for personalizing content But personalization offers countless opportunities is our “Recommended For You” tab, which is notto surface content in smarter ways. It means using up to our standards and has provoked many readertechnology to ensure that the right stories are find- complaints. The list occupies a prominent spot oning the right readers in the right places at the right our homepage but the newsroom has not been verytimes. involved in discussions. As a result, the formula we use offers content that would otherwise be hid- For example, letting you know when you’re walk- den on the site — but it often shows smaller-boreing by a restaurant we just reviewed; knowing that items. “It’s possible we’re using the entirely wrongyou prefer to get stories by email; and making sure algorithm,” said Boris Chen, a data scientist on Theyou never miss a story about your alma mater. Times’s personalization team. But editors, he said, must help him understand what is wrong so he can Even with the home page there is an opportunity create a better alternative.for a measured approach — in effect, serve everyonethe same dinner but at least give them their favorite Another significant tool for personalization — adesserts. For basketball fans who never read about section of the home page for content that readersbaseball, that means showing them the story about missed but would likely want to see, based on theirthe Knicks game rather than the Yankees game (un- reading patterns — is being planned by Design forless the baseball story has been flagged as impor- NYT5 and the iPhone app.tant, such as a story on a perfect game). The newsroom should consider devoting more at- Readers have come to expect this personalization. tention to these new initiatives. And the newsroomFacebook’s new Paper app, for example, is built on should clarify how much personalization we wantnews feeds tailored to each user. Yahoo has recently on our home page and on our apps. Until then, theused personalization technology to drive growth in uncertainty about what is acceptable will limit ournews readership. creativity and initiative on this front. Other media sites, like BuzzFeed and The Wash- 37

A BETTER ENGINE Readers have come to expect smart personalization online. But our current recommendation engine, right, uses an algorithm to serve up content that leaves many readers puzzled about our judgment. “Based on what The New York Times thinks I’m interested in, I am not a fun person,” wrote Margaret Sullivan, our public editor. The Times is planning to add other features that help personalize the reading experience in more subtle ways. One example, below, which we’ve illustrated with the help of a gray box, would show individual readers the stories they missed on the home page since their last visit. Though all readers would see the same top news stories, the other articles we show them would be customized to reflect what they haven’t seen.38 Growing Our Audience | Discovery

Experiment: Until the feature was recently discontinued as partFollowing of the NYT5 redesign, the only way for Times read- ers to be notified of new favorites was by email. ThisWe’ve heard time and again that younger readers feature was hard to find, hidden at the bottom ofare moving away from browsing and that they in- stories below the comment section, and requiredcreasingly expect news to come to them, on social, readers to plow through multiple sign-up pages.through alerts and through personalization. There Even so, it had 338,000 users and unusually highis a sense that “if something is important, it will find engagement rates. Some technically savvy readersme.” We are far behind in adjusting to these trends. are so eager not to miss stories that they have even written code so that certain stories are sent to them We could create a “follow” button that offers read- automatically.ers a variety of ways to curate and receive their ownnews feeds, ensuring they never miss a Modern Love Such “following” features have been critical toor Maureen Dowd column. With a single click, their the success of YouTube, Spotify and Twitter. Butfavorite topics, features and writers could automati- increasingly Circa, Breaking News, The Verge andcally be collected in a Following Inbox. We could other digital outlets are doing this with news. Thealso offer readers the opportunity to have alerts Design and Product teams have been exploring suchabout new stories sent to their phone or email. a feature for columnists, and should have the news- room’s support.TOUGH AUDIENCE *This data is based on registered users and subscribers % OF READERS* 100%We’ve always had a sense that Paul Krugman 90%readers were loyal followers Gail Collinsof their favorite columnists. Maureen Dowd 80%And the paper makes it easy David Brooksto catch certain bylines Joe Nocera 70%(Monday morning? Time for Bill KellerDavid Carr). On the Internet, 60%however, readers are far morefickle. The accompanying 50%charts show that readers don’tcome back often to the same 40%columnist. The quality of theirwork isn’t the issue. Making it 30%easier for readers to discoverwhat they already like – by 20%creating a “follow” feature foreach columnist, for example – 10%could make these charts look 0%very different. 50 STORIES 1 5 10 15 20N° OF A.O. Scott 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% OF READERS*STORIES Melissa Clark 1 David Carr 2 Floyd Norris 3 Holland Cotter 4 Ginia Bellafante 5 6-10 0%11-20 21+ 39

BUILDING A FOLLOWINGThese are some examples of features we could add to our mobileapp to help readers follow their favorite topics, bylines and stories. TOP STORIES FOLLOWING 14 You’ve read 4 Melissa Clark Articles TODAY this month. Tap to Follow her.POLITICS INVISIBLE CHILD Early results for large-scaleWill Handshake e-learning courses are disap-With Castro Lead to A Neighborhood’s pointing, forcing a rethinking ofHeadache for Obama? Profound Divide how college instruction can bestPresident Obama’s gesture Dasani, one of New York’s 22,000 homeless chil- RESTAURANT REVIEWSto Raúl Castro of Cuba at the dren, lives on the margins of a gentrified city.memorial for Nelson Mandela The Student Does theinstantly raised questions about ITALY Master Proudits deeper meaning. Rise of Young Leaders Signals a Restaurant Review: Sushi Naka-MANDELA Mandate for Political Change in Italy zawa in the West VillageThe Great and The The Italian Parliament has been deadlocked on MELISSA CLARKHumble Honor Mandela major changes for years, unable or unwilling to enact bills to overhaul the political system or Roasted Apple andNelson Mandela’s memorial unshackle the economy, which has barely grown in Blue Cheese Tartservice in Soweto, South Af- two decades.rica, drew a remarkable crowd Melissa Clark serves a sophisticated roastedof global V.I.P.’s, including apple, shallot and blue cheese tart at her holidayPresident Obama and at least cocktail party.91 other heads of state andINVESTIGATIVEBREAKING: Metro North Train BREAKING METRO NORTH UPDATE: 3 deadCrashes in the Bronx. and 60 wounded. At least 6 others in critical condition. The NYTimes will keep covering the Metro North Crash over the next few hours as the news unfolds. GET LIVE UPDATESA news alert arrives for Tapping on the alert brings the At the end of the article, the The reader is notified of newbreaking news. reader to a developing story. reader is prompted with the updates. option of following the story.40 Growing Our Audience | Discovery

“The Paper of Record,” Version 2.0A century ago, The Times began the laborious pro- about.”cess of identifying and tagging the major and mi- And here is an ugly truth about structured data:nor topics and characters of every story it produced. there are substantial costs to waiting.Each year, it compiled these listings in the massive For example, because our recipes were never“New York Times Index,” the only complete index properly tagged by ingredients and cooking time,of a U.S. newspaper. This effort made us indispens- we floundered about for 15 years trying to figure outable to librarians, historians and academics. And it how to create a useful recipe database. We can doearned us a nickname: “The Paper of Record.” it now, but only after spending a huge sum to ret-The many opportunities described in this report roactively structure the data. The lack of structured— and others that will only become clear over time data also helps explain why we are unable to auto-— require us to focus on this humble art we helped mate the sale of our photos and why we continuallypioneer, which we still call “tagging.” struggle to attain higher rankings on search engines.In the digital world, tagging is a We need to reclaim our industry-type of structured data — the in- The structured leading position, but right now ourformation that allows things to data we create is needs are far more basic. We mustbe searched and sorted and made still defined by expand the structured data we cre-useful for analysis and innova- ate, which is still defined by thetion. Some of the most success- needs of the Times Index ratherful Internet companies, including than our modern digital capabili- ties.the Times Index.Netflix, Facebook and Pandora,have so much structured data — by For example, at a time whentagging dozens or even hundreds of different ele- nearly 60 percent of our readers access us via mo-ments of every movie, song and article — that they bile devices, we are missing an opportunity to servehave turned the science of surfacing the right piece up content that’s relevant to their locations becauseof content at the right time into the core of thriving we are not tagging stories with geographic coordi-businesses. nates. The Boston Globe is among the many publi-The Times, however, hasn’t updated its structured cations doing this.data to meet the changing demands of our digital Similarly, to enable readers to follow updatesage and is falling far behind as a result. Without on running news stories, we need to be using tagsbetter tagging, we are hamstrung in our ability to that tie together articles, photos, and videos aboutallow readers to follow developing stories, discover a news event, like “Boston Marathon Bombing.”nearby restaurants that we have reviewed or even It took seven years for us to start tagging storieshave our photos show up on search engines. “September 11.”“Everyone forgets about metadata,” said John “We never made a tag for Benghazi, and I wishO’Donovan, the chief technology officer for The we had because the story just won’t die,” said KristiFinancial Times. “They think they can just make Reilly of our Archive, Metadata and Search team.stuff and then forget about how it is organized in Her boss, Evan Sandhaus, framed the opportunityterms of how you describe your content. But all your more strongly: “We don’t tag the one thing” — newsassets are useless to you unless you have metadata events — “that people use to navigate the news.”— your archive is full of stuff that is of no value Our competitors are a full step ahead of us in us-because you can’t find it and don’t know what it’s ing structured data. The Washington Post and The 41

Wall Street Journal use it for insight into how read- That means we may need to build out those teams,ers are using their websites. At Circa, each article is and we will certainly need to go to great lengths tobroken into “atoms of news,” such as facts, quotes, explain how crucial this effort is to our long-termand statistics. That allows editors to quickly surface success.relevant content and context during breaking news. Every day we wait, we fall further behind our Expanding our structured data capabilities would competitors. The Times considered increasing itsrequire us to address some technology and work- tagging efforts in 2010 and passed. The cost offlow issues. Notably, it would put greater demands catching up has only grown.on our copy editors, web producers and librarians.BIGGER DATAHere are some examples of structured data that wouldallow us to make better use of our content:NEW TAG SAMPLE TAGS POTENTIAL BENEFITGeographic location ofstory content Gramercy Restaurant Surface new and old content relevant to readers’ locations,Timeliness 40.7386° N, 73.9885° W particularly for mobile usage.Story type Timely forever Surface old content in a smart way, including adding Timely for a year sophistication to our recommendation engines and easierStory threads Timely for a month ways for editors to feature relevant older stories.Story tone Timely for a dayPhotos: topics Breaking news Make better use of evergreen content well after publica-Photos: articles where Profile tion.photo appeared News analysis Conduct more granular analysis of users’ reading behavior.Photos: usage rights Crisis in Enable readers to follow ongoing stories and news events. Ukraine Better organize our archives. Uplifting Improve content discovery by letting users surface stories Serious based on their mood. Ukraine Display photos in search results on our site and our apps. Viktor Yanukovych Tagging photos by topic would improve the ranking of our content in search results. “A Kiev Question: What Create a ‘news in photos’ experience that lets users start Became of the Missing?” with a photo and click through to a related article. Rights cleared Sell prints of all rights-cleared photos on our site. No resale rights42 Growing Our Audience | Discovery

2PromotionAt The Times, we generally like to let our work reporter didn’t tweet about it for two days. (Thoughspeak for itself. We’re not ones to brag. the pieces still had massive reach and impact, we don’t know how many more readers we could have Our competitors have no such qualms, and many attracted with additional effort.)are doing a better job of getting their journalism infront of new readers through aggressive story pro- “I don’t feel like we sit down when we have a bigmotion. They regard this as a core function of re- project, a big story, and say, ‘How do we roll thisporters and editors, and they react with amazement out?’” said one top editor. “It would require an en-that the same is not true here. tirely different way of thinking. It would be about saying, ‘This is what is running on Sunday.’” “A lot of the institutions that are doing well aremarketing themselves well,” said Amanda Michel, A key tool is social media. Our institutional ac-head of social media for The Guardian. “People may counts reach tens of millions of people and the ac-think that’s dirty, but it’s reality.” counts of individual reporters and editors reach mil- lions more. The size of our social team reflects our The Guardian has a promotion team inside the eagerness to succeed in this arena. But with lessnewsroom and an ambitious social strategy that has than 10 percent of our digital traffic coming to ushelped rapidly expand its readership in the United through social media we are still figuring out howStates. The Huffington Post expects all reporters to best engage readers.and editors to be fully fluent in social media, includ-ing the kinds of headlines and photos that tend to The percentage of readers who visit BuzzFeedperform best on different platforms. The Atlantic through social, for example, is more than six timesand its digital properties expect reporters to pro- greater than at The Times. They have learned,mote their own work and mine traffic numbers to among other things, that a great Facebook post haslook for best practices. become a better promotional device than a head- line and that the impact of social is even greater Even ProPublica, that bastion of old-school jour- on mobile.nalism values, goes to extraordinary lengths to givestories a boost. An editor meets with search, social Many outlets place a team in the newsroom toand public relations specialists to develop a promo- track the most popular stories in real time. As thosetion strategy for every story. And reporters must stories spike, the team helps desks take steps tosubmit five tweets along with each story they file. draw more traffic and to keep visitors on the site longer. Other sites also look for unexpectedly poor By contrast, our approach is muted. After we performers and repackage them to give them a lift.spent more than a year producing a signature piece Reuters, for instance, recently hired two employeesof journalism — the “Invisible Child” series — we to scour the site to find up to seven hidden gemsalerted our marketing and PR colleagues too late per day, which they then repackage and republishfor them to do any promotion ahead of time. The 43

to give them a second chance. post. We need to create structures inside the newsroom Now The Huffington Post regularly outperformsthat broaden the reach and impact of our most im- us in these areas — sometimes even with our ownportant work. In addition, we need to identify and content. An executive there described watching theirshare best practices at the ground level so that re- aggregation outperform our original content afterporters and editors feel encouraged and empowered Nelson Mandela’s death. “You guys got crushed,”to promote their own work. he said. “I was queasy watching the numbers. I’m not proud of this. But this is your competition. You And we need to focus more attention on the be- should defend the digital pick-pockets from steal-hind-the-scenes process of optimization. Just add- ing your stuff with better headlines, better social.”ing structured data, for example, immediately in-creased traffic to our recipes from search engines Other competitors, like The Atlantic and Politico,by 52 percent. are also using emails as direct channels to readers. This basic tool has become one of the most popular Companies like Huffington Post and BuzzFeed and efficient ways to cut through all the noise of thehave, in just a few years, eclipsed our traffic by social web and reach readers directly. The Times isbuilding best practices for search and social into reaching 6.5 million readers by email, even thoughtheir workflow. For example, at The Huffington this tool has largely been treated as an afterthought.Post, a story cannot be published unless it has aphoto, a search headline, a tweet and a FacebookAdd a link to NEW TOOLSNYT home page.Add a related article. Promotion doesn’t just mean using social media sites likeAdd a form where Twitter and Facebook. Emailreaders can sign up to and search are also powerfulreceive notices about drivers of traffic. Anotherfuture quizzes. is optimization, the use of specialized tools and tactics to Sign up for emails to future New draw readers and keep them York Times quizzes. reading. At competitors, this is done story by story and platform by platform, before and after publication. The dialect quiz had 21 million visits and still gets around 10,000 per day. But the simply designed page did little to keep visitors on our site. Here are some features that we could have added to help the quiz drive more traffic to other parts of the site. Q&A Ask a question of the professors behind the quiz, Bert Vaux and Scott Golder. Add a Q&A. Add a link to a social site that is driving heavy traffic to this feature.44 Growing Our Audience | Promotion

Opportunity:Institutional PromotionOur Twitter account is run by the newsroom. Our rather than as a tool for audience development. ThisFacebook account is run by the business side. approach was an important first step to help the newsroom start exploring social media. But today it This unwieldy structure highlights a problem that means that we are mostly leaving the larger promo-has bedeviled our promotion efforts. Even though tion question unaddressed.audience development is the kind of work thatshould be shared across the company, it instead Though many of our competitors also use socialfalls into silos, with marketing, public relations, for reporting, they mainly view it as an audiencesearch, and social all answering to different bosses development tool. They told us they also use it as aand rarely collaborating. hotbed of experimentation because platforms and user behavior change so quickly. These departments should work together on pro-motion strategies, such as publicizing big stories At The Times, the social team collects less databefore and after they are published. We also need and is less integrated with the rest of the newsroomto change our tools and workflows to optimize our than at our competitors, hampering our efforts tocontent for search and social, and exploit other di- identify and spread best practices. Others haverect channels to readers, such as email. paired social editors with data experts and then ag- gressively spread lessons through their newsrooms. There is a widely held assumption in the news-room that promotion is mostly done by the social “When we figured out the Facebook algorithmteam. But the team has framed its mission most- and that Facebook mattered more than Twitter,ly around using social media as a reporting tool, traffic exploded,” said Jacob Weisberg of Slate.FAN BASE GOING MOBILEThe number of Facebook followers counts for a lot. But a more telling indicator of reader Most of the social networks’ traffic comes fromengagement is how many of them interact with content, by posting comments and “liking” smartphones. That’s why our competitors say the key tostories. By this measure, many of our competitors are doing better than us. winning mobile is to win on social.Number of fans Number of ‘engaged fans’ 0 2,5M 5M 7,5M % of engagedHuffington 52 PINTEREST TWITTER Post 19 Fox NewsUSA Today 16NPR 13 FACEBOOKWashington 8 Mobile Traffic Post 5 Web Traffic NYTimes Source: BuzzFeed3CNN 45

Experiment: the word; a marketer who reaches out throughPromotion Squad phone calls or emails to other media outlets, as well as organizations that are interested in the topic. TheWe could form a promotional team of experts in story editor also participates to ensure the journal-the newsroom to focus on building and executing ism is being promoted appropriately. And a datastrategies for extending the reach of our most im- analyst evaluates the impact of the promotion.portant work. Our committee pulled together such a team from The model used by ProPublica is instructive, with across departments for an experiment with Thea team that creates a specific strategy for each story New York Times Magazine for the February “Voy-in advance of its publication. The team includes an ages” issue. We let them run the experiment whileexpert to focus on ways to boost a story on search we participated as observers. The traffic figuresthrough headlines, links and other tactics; a social were underwhelming — actually decreasing fromeditor who decides which platforms are best for the the previous year — and the process had numerousstory and then finds influential people to help spread stumbles. These results should be instructive for any future efforts. LESSONS LEARNED The Magazine promotion experiment was not a success. Here are three lessons we learned. 1. There were disagreements about strategy and no clear leader to resolve them. 2. The promotion specialists seemed unclear about the tools at their disposal, so they gravitated to conservative approaches they knew best. 3. Decisions were made without data, which affected both setting goals and measuring outcomes.46 Growing Our Audience | Promotion

Opportunity:Front-Line PromotionThe Times made a smart decision when it decided Reporters and editors are eager to do what isnot to establish rules for using social media, prefer- asked of them, as long as they have clarity on bothring instead to trust reporters and editors to exer- how and why — as well as some assurance that thecise their judgment. We gave people the room to ex- extra effort will be rewarded. Right now, they areperiment and adapt to developing mediums. There unsure of whether spending time on social repre-are no rules, but no real guidance, either. sents doing work or avoiding it. We need to explicitly urge reporters and editors For example, A.O. Scott said that his film reviewsto promote their work and we need to thank those occasionally get an outsize reaction on social. Hewho make the extra effort. Interest in and aptitude is torn between engaging with readers and movingfor social media should not be required — just as we on to the next story. “It raises the question, whendon’t expect every reporter to be a great writer — but is pushing it forward the better substitute for doingit should be a factor. And we need to help journalists more work?”raise their profiles on social by sharing best practic-es. Our journalists want maximum readership and There are countless examples of smart socialimpact but many don’t know how to use social me- and community efforts around the building. KJdia effectively. Content promotion needs to become Dell’Antonia, our Motherlode blogger, spends aboutmore integrated into each desk’s daily workflow. an hour every day replying to commenters. Gina Ko- lata writes back to all readers who email her. Chris The notion that journalists should be their own Chivers makes time, even in war zones, to managepromoters has become a bedrock principle at our social accounts on eight different platforms.competitors. For example, Dan Colarusso, executiveeditor of Reuters Digital, said, “All web editors en- All of these reporters complained that the tacticsgage on social and are also tasked with identifying they use to reach readers are one-offs. They all ex-related communities and seeding their content.” pressed hope that the broader newsroom could be given tools and support to help journalists connect Other places test approaches to social engage- with their audiences.ment and then actively disseminate the results. Thattaps into reporters’ competitive instincts, and raises One approach would be to create an “impact tool-everyone’s game. box” and train an editor on each desk to use it. The toolbox would provide strategy, tactics and tem-Bearing witness, and sharing plates for increasing the reach of an article before and after it’s published. Over time, the editor could teach others. There is compelling evidence that these best prac- tices can be taught. Many of the reporters who are best at social promotion — such as Nick Kristof, Nick Bilton, C.J. Chivers, David Carr and Charles Duhigg — learned these skills from their publishers as part of their book-promotion efforts. Andrea Elliott said she also received this training after signing her book deal at Random House. 47

Experiment:Influencers MapTo help promote the Kristof collection, we pulled up below what an influencer map for “Inside thetogether a list of relevant, influential people who Brothels” might look like.could spread the word about it on social media.This work could be automated and turned into an The work paid off. Someone we had contactedinternal tool, which we could use to help promote about the collection shared it on Twitter and wasour best journalism on social media. We’ve mocked retweeted by Ashton Kutcher, who has 15.9 million followers. INFLUENCERSTOPICS: KRISTOF SEX TRAFFICKING INDIA PAKISTAN CAMBODIANYTIMES EXTERNAL FILTER BYNick Kristof Sheryl WuDunn Becca Stevens Minky Wordenopinion columnist co-author of “Half the Sky” priest in Tennessee who has director of Global Initiatives@NickKristof @WuDunn fought sex trafficking at Human Rights Watch, NGO1.46 million followers 11,200 followers @RevBeccaStevens @minkyshighjinks 1,354 followers 5,736 followersLydia Polgreen @Halfdeputy foreign editor and account for “Half the Sky” Liriel Higa Tom Dartformer foreign correspondent book on the treatment of social media coordinator for Sheriff in Cook County,in India, South Africa, etc women around the world “Half the Sky” Illinois active in fighting sex@lpolgreen 50,500 followers @idiplomacy trafficking38,700 followers 3,161 followers @TomDart Restore NYC 2,688 FollowersDeclan Walsh an NGO Andrea PowellPakistan bureau chief @restorenyc Executive Director & Lisa Goldblatt Grace@declanwalsh 5,963 followers Co-Founder, FAIR Girls, head of My Life My Choice,45,300 followers non-profit that fights sex Boston-based group fighting Change.Org trafficking sex traffickingSalman Masood an activist platform @Fair_Girls @mlmcgirlsPakistan correspondent @change.org 12,200 followers 238 followers@salmanmasood 777,000 followers18,300 followers Bradley Myles Gary Haugen Apne App Executive director of Polaris CEO of International JusticeThomas Fuller an India-based NGO fighting Project, which fights human Missionsoutheast Asia correspondent sex-trafficking trafficking @garyhaugen@ThomasFullerNYT @apneaap @Polaris_Project 21,300 followers4,763 followers 2,114 followers 28,600 followers Somaly MamEllen Barry Ashley Judd Ken Roth Cambodian human rightsSouth Asia bureau actress who has spoken out executive director of Human activistchief, formerly Russia against sex trafficking Rights Watch, NGO @somalymamcorrespondent @ashleyjudd @KenRoth 405,000 followers@EllenBarryNYT 202,000 followers 50,800 followers10,200 followers48 Growing Our Audience | Promotion

3ConnectionThe Times commands respect, conveys authority better used elsewhere.and inspires devotion. All of that is captured in the Our other efforts for engaging with readers —pride with which people identify themselves as de-voted Times readers. many of which have been well-received — mostly have been one-offs. Impressive projects rarely lead This is our huge advantage as we think more about to replicable tools that could be used to elevate ourconnecting with our audience. whole report. This audience is often described as our single most And our offline efforts to connect with readers,underutilized resource. We can count the world’s like conferences and cruises, are largely outdatedbest-informed and most influential people among replicas of competitors’ work, and we have pursuedour readers. And we have a platform to which many them without much newsroom input. Meanwhile,of them would be willing and honored to contribute. The Atlantic and The New Yorker have created sig- nature events that deepen loyalty and make money Yet we haven’t cracked the code for engaging with while staying true to their brands.them in a way that makes our report richer. The newsroom needs to take on these questions Of all the tasks we discuss in this report, the chal- of connection and engagement. We are in a sub-lenge of connecting with and engaging readers — scriber-driven business, our digital content needs towhich extends from online comments to conferenc- travel on the backs of readers to find new readers,es — has been the most difficult. But best practices and there is an appetite to know the people behindhave emerged on these fronts, as well, and many of our report. We can come up with a Timesian way forour competitors are experimenting aggressively and connecting with our readers online and offline thatpulling ahead of us. deepens their loyalty. Aside from social, our main platform for engaging The first step is getting more comfortable withwith readers is moderated comments, a forum that the idea of pulling back the curtain and providingis respected for its quality but does not have wide readers a bit more insight into how we do our work,appeal. Only a fraction of stories are opened for which will only deepen their connection to it.comments, only one percent of readers write com-ments and only three percent of readers read com- Outlets like NPR and The Guardian, which reachments. Our trusted-commenter system, which we similar audiences, have used this approach to goodhoped would increase engagement, includes just a effect. “Few places have that brand, but The Newfew hundred readers. That has prompted business- York Times does,” said Vivian Schiller, formerly ofside leaders to question their value and newsroom The Times and NPR, and now head of news at Twit-leaders to wonder whether those resources could be ter. 49