Twelve NYU undergrads in Professor Jay Rosen’s spring 2015 class, “The Future of the New York Times,” have been looking into efforts at the Times to find a secure and sustainable future in a radically changed world for all media companies. (Fuller description here.) The first task they undertook was to try to classify all the major efforts the Times has underway to prepare the institution for what is ahead. So far the class has found 13 distinct efforts of this type. (Descriptions here.) On this tab the class has listed the key articles for understanding each of the 13 future-facing initiatives. No resource like this has existed online— until now.
Know of an article or study that belongs on these lists? Join the conversation or drop us a line.
The audience development team
- “Inside the NY Times’ audience development strategy.” Digiday, Jan. 14, 2015
- “Memo from New York Times’ Alex MacCallum.” Capital New York, Dec. 1, 2014
- “Q&A: Amy O’Leary on eight years of navigating digital culture change at The New York Times.” Nieman Lab, Jan. 14, 2015
- “An Unusual Hire, for Uncommon Times.” NY Times, 23 Aug 2014
- “Dean Baquet’s ‘Charting the Future’ Note to Times Staff.” NYT, 6 Jan 2015
The mobile imperative
- “The New York Times is trying to make its mobile apps more than simple containers for news stories.” Nieman Lab, Nov. 5, 2012
- “A mixed bag on apps: What The New York Times learned with NYT Opinion and NYT Now.” Nieman Lab, Oct. 1, 2014
- “The New York Times App Plan Isn’t Working, So It’s Laying Off Staff.” Re/code, Oct. 1, 2014
- “Lessons from The New York Times’ app graveyard: when an app has an expiration date.” Nieman Lab, Jan. 23, 2013
- “NYT editor says NYT Now mobile app has not proved a success, but NYT
- “The New York Times launched a revamped mobile site today.” Nieman Lab, May 1 2013
- “Under the Surface of the NYT Mobile Redesign.” Source, May 7, 2013
Heavier reliance on subscribers
- “A mixed bag on apps: What The New York Times learned with NYT Opinion and NYT Now.” Nieman Lab, Oct. 1, 2014
- “New York Times Is Considering Giving Away News Digest App for Free, CEO Says.” Re/Code, Feb. 17, 2015
- “Times mulling changes to NYT Now subscription model.” Capital New York, Feb. 17, 2015
- “The New York Times is thinking about new ways to compete with free by charging less” Nieman Lab, Aug. 7, 2014
- “New York Times editor Dean Baquet lays out 2015 strategy” Capital New York, Jan. 6, 2015
The in-house native advertising studio
- “Inside T Brand Studio, The New York Times’ native ad unit.” Digi Day, Dec. 2, 2014
- “The New York Times Takes Native Advertising to the Next Level With Cole Haan.” Contently, Oct. 10, 2014.
- “The 60-second interview: Adam Aston, editorial director for the New York Times’ T Brand Studio.” Capital, Jun. 27, 2014
- “Native Ad Production Values Keep Growing With ‘Orange is the New Black’ Promo.” Ad Age, Jun. 13, 2014.
- “You can expect more multimedia-rich native advertising from The New York Times.” Nieman Lab, Jun. 16, 2014.
- “Meredith Levien, The New York Times, on Good Native Advertising with Terry Kawaja, LUMA Partners.” Interactive Advertising Bureau. Feb. 11, 2014
- “Native Ads Were ‘Inside’ 10% of Digital at The New York Times Last Year.” Ad Age, Feb. 3, 2015
Making the New York Times into a global product
- “The New York Times en español: An experiment is putting Times stories in front of Spanish-speaking readers.” NiemanLab, Feb. 17, 2015
- “NYT publishes bilingual story.” Media Moves, Apr. 30, 2013
- “The Newsonomics of the The New York Times’ Expanding Global Strategy.” Oct. 18, 2012
- “Krugman, translated: The promise and risk of The New York Times’ Chinese-language site.” NiemanLab, Jul. 3, 2012
- “NYT: Publishing stories in Spanish ‘not experimental.’” Poynter, May 2, 2013
Development of sub-brands that excel in their niche
- “Here comes The Upshot, the new explanatory journalism effort from the New York Times.” Gigaom. April 21, 2014
- “The Upshot: Where The New York Times Is Redesigning News.” Fast Company
- “The New York Times’ Well blog gets more vertical with a redesign.” Neiman Lab. April 17, 2012
Building out the web platform and a sophisticated CMS
- “Will the New York Times web design lead to a new standard?” Fast Company, Dec. 6, 2012.
- “What the New York Times reboot gets right.” Fast Company, Jan. 8, 2014.
- “Scoop: Here’s the inside look under the hood of the New York Times.” Neiman Lab, June 17, 2014
- “The Inside Scoop on CMS at The New York Times.” CMSmyth.com. June 20, 2014
Expansion into video
- “Inside the New York Times video strategy.” Digiday, Oct. 30, 2014
- “The New York Times moves away from its dual-reporting structure for video” NiemanLab, Nov. 26, 2013
- “Should The Washington Post, The New York Times, and other top publishers pool their video in a consortium?” NiemanLab, Feb. 5, 2014
- “Monday Q&A: The New York Times’ new head of video production on plans for growth” NiemanLab, May 6 2013
- “How to produce value and revenue with digital video.” American Press Institute, Feb. 5, 2015
- “Good video content: What’s working for news publishers, what isn’t.” American Press Institute, Feb. 5, 2015
- “NewFronts Begin: New York Times Pitches a Surge of Digital Video” Ad Age, April 28, 2014
Live from the Times: events, conferences and courses
- “Build your events strategy around existing strengths.” American Press Institute, Aug. 8, 2014
- “Media Outlets Embrace Conferences as Profits Rise.” NYT, Oct. 27, 2013
- “The newsonomics of the new Chattanooga (Events) Choo-Choo.” Nieman Lab, Sep. 18, 2013
E-Commerce: The New York Times Store and Journeys
- “The New York Times Relaunches The New York Times Store.” The New York Times Company. Jan. 16, 2015
- “Times Company Creating a Wine Club.” The New York Times. Aug. 13, 2009
- “Cuba and Iran among new offerings in Times Journeys program.” Travel Weekly. Nov. 30, 2014
- “Times Journeys.” Objective Subject
- “New York Times Gets into the Cruise Business.” Huffington Post. Jan. 11, 2012
- “New York Times leverages travel expertise for global trip program.” Luxury Daily. Mar. 2, 2014.
- “New York Times launches tour program.” Travel Weekly. Mar. 12, 2014
- “New York Times Joins Other Publishers in the Tour Business.” Skift. Mar. 17, 2014
- “NYT ropes in reporters for its travel business.” Digiday. Mar. 17, 2014
Reorganization of the executive corps and newsroom leadership
- “The Suit in the Newsroom: An Unusual Times Executive—for Unusual Times.” New York Magazine, Aug. 23, 2013
- “Times Ousts Jill Abramson as Executive Editor, Elevating Dean Baquet.” The New York Times, May 14, 2014
- “The Newsonomics of The New York Times’ Innovators’ Dilemmas.” Newsonomics, May 22, 2014
- “New York Times Expands Newsroom Leadership to Address Shifts in Industry.” The New York Times, Sept. 24, 2014
- “Dean Baquet’s First Digital Initiative: Adding Editors.” Capital New York, July 8, 2014.
- “New York Times Names Four More ‘Digital Deputies.’” Capital New York, Nov. 3, 2014.
- “Why The New York Times Hired Kinsey Wilson.” Newsonomics, Nov. 25, 2014
- “Times’ Digital Chief Search Hits a Bump.” Capital New York, Feb. 2, 2014
Research and development: NYT Labs
- “NYT Labs tool makes your Twitter feed into a reading list.” Capital New York, May 16, 2014
- “New from NYT R&D: Quips.” Columbia Journalism Review, Apr. 15, 2013
- “NYT Labs: Can a newspaper think like a startup?” Gigaom, Aug. 8, 2011
- “The New York Times’ R&D Lab has built a tool that explores the life stories take in the social space.” NiemanLab, Apr. 22, 2011
- “Inside the New York Times Skunkworks.” Digiday, May 8, 2012
Culture change: overcoming a print vs. digital divide
- “The leaked New York Times innovation report is one of the key documents of this media age.” NiemanLab, May 15, 2014
- “The End Of The Print New York Times.” BuzzFeed News, May 15, 2014
- “Jill Abramson announces big leadership changes at ‘New York Times.'” Capital New York, July 12, 2013
- “New York Times combines print, Web staffs in single newsroom.” Poynter, Aug. 2, 2005
- “Dean Baquet: NYT will retire ‘system of pitching stories for the print Page 1′.” Poynter, Feb. 19, 2015
- “Will the new Page One meetings finally make the Times digital first?” Columbia Journalism Review, Feb. 23, 2015
- “Culture change is hard: What Nikki Usher learned in five months embedded in The New York Times newsroom.” NiemanLab, May 12, 2014
- “Q&A: Amy O’Leary on eight years of navigating digital culture change at The New York Times.” NiemanLab, Jan. 14, 2015
- “What is the culture like at the New York Times?” Quora, Dec. 29, 2013
- “Dean Baquet Takes Reins Of ‘Stunned’ New York Times Newsroom.” Huffington Post, May 14, 2014
What do you think? Join the conversation.
Did we miss anything? Drop us a line.
