NY Times Turning News Into A Platform

from the smart dept

Thu, Feb 5th 2009 9:02pm — Mike Masnick

For years, we've been big fans of the concept of having newspapers start becoming platforms, rather than monolithic "news delivering" services. Over the past year or so, a group of digitally savvy folks at the NY Times have shown one way that can work. Their latest move? To turn the NY Times news articles into a true platform. They've released an API for news, allowing others to actually build useful tools on top of the NY Times' news articles. Contrast that to, say, GateHouse Media, which recently sued the NY Times for trying to build useful tools on top of GateHouse's content.

Of course, just because there are some folks on the digital side who "get it" at the NY Times, it doesn't mean management has quite figured things out yet. At the same time as releasing this API, the paper's Executive Editor, Bill Keller is talking about trying to lock up their content and charge people for it, again. Yes, the newspaper needs new and innovative business models, but by now it should know that trying to charge for such content simply isn't a sustainable model. There's too much competition out there (which the NY Times discovered already when it tried and failed to charge for content a few years back). There are things that the paper can charge for -- but basic online content isn't one that will be successful.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: api, news, platform
Companies: ny times

3 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

opit, 5 Feb 2009 @ 9:51pm

Locked content
I run a link recommendation site : sort of a catchall of my picks of interest. NYT lost coverage like mad when it tried to tie up content. They didn't quit because the tactic was a winner.
Likewise AP has the bright idea they can charge for articles. Someone hasn't realized my free advertising is not their revenue stream.I don't list article one from their sources : and doubt I'm alone.
The long tail isn't monetized by me. Like most, the operation is a money losing hobby.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Steve (profile), 6 Feb 2009 @ 3:33am

Irony!
Have you looked at the title of the article they use as an example?

My boss is very excited by this - we will definitely be looking at this.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 6 Feb 2009 @ 8:00am

I believe I understand your use of the term "platform", but having looked at NYT links I do not at this time see the correlation. Much of it seems to be a search engine for the NYT's archives. Other than a portion that appears to be a "forum" of sorts, I did not see anything that relates to current news stories. Perhaps I have missed something on the NYT site, or that this is but a first step in the "platform" direction, with more yet to come.
[ link to this | view in thread ]