How Else Could The NY Times Have Spent $40 Million?
from the let's-come-up-with-some-ideas dept
While we've already been suitably stumped over the question of how the NY Times spent $40 million dollars to create the Emperor's New Paywall, perhaps we should take a more proactive view and discuss what else they could have done with that $40 million to put it to use more productively. That link has a few suggestions, from creating better products to investing in startups. I'm still wondering why it didn't use that money to simply create more value for users -- more features, more tools to keep them coming back, greater access to journalists and each other, more community features, etc. So how else do people think they could have spent that $40 million more productively?
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Filed Under: business models, journalism, paywalls
Companies: ny times
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And the answer is...
Most of the stuff is tax-deductible as a business expense, and this way certain "special" people can get lots of money from the company in a secretive manner without having to report it to the Infernal Revenue Service.
This is, of course, entirely speculative. Entirely my opinion, but it does appear to represent a working hypothesis on where the money went.
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Re:
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More comics by American or New York artists
Better promotions.
A forum to get ideas from the community
More informed journalism. (read: more objective journalism)
A huge donation to Child's Play or even a game sub section.
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I'd go on but it's safe to say, there are a LOT of ways they could have spent this on something other than a poorly made Java wall.
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they also could have tried something less gimmicky than a see-through paywall... like slap bracelets (I know it sounds silly but I got one from Chegg and everyone I know is like OMG A SLAP BRACELET!!)
they could have used that money to partner with and advertise a deal with say, starbucks? dunkin donuts? a receipt from either store could get you a free printed paper?
speaking of gimmicks, how about a "special edition" printed paper that is in a magazine format, with glossy paper and everything, and make it cost the same as a normal paper. (that's that scarce good, this reminds me of trent reznor's color changing cds)
what else can I pull out of my ass or off the top of my head? you would think with $40,000,000 at stake, someone would have thought of better ideas than these, which I think are better than they one they went with...
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40 million dollar question
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Research
If you want one project they could have probably done for 40 mil, they could have created a curated database of source information of all of the research that has gone into every hard hitting NYT story (ever?) and charge for access to that (searchable, etc), along with a subscription for content added in the future, and as a bonus, use this DB internally to embed relevant source material on every story hosted on the site (at the very least going forward, and at best, retroactively). How would you like to see that? I know I would.
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Re: Research
You're just not thinking fourth dimensionally, Marty!
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So how else do people think they could have spent that $40 million more productively?
Was this a trick question because it's April Fool's Day?
If it's serious, one idea would have been to use the money into a "content production factory" where people could submit their works to be used by the paper.
This would benefit the artists (credited), the paper (no license issues), and everyone's happier for it.
But I still think strippers is the better answer.
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Re: So how else do people think they could have spent that $40 million more productively?
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Re: So how else do people think they could have spent that $40 million more productively?
This would benefit the artists (credited), the paper (no license issues), and everyone's happier for it.
Except that would ruin their "only professional journalists can do journalism" story.
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Forbes Seems Proactive
So how does Forbes intend to compete? "Our full-time staff of experienced editors and reporters is now both covering the news and recruiting hundreds of qualified contributors — in effect, curators — to create the content our voracious audience requires."
The Times could have been spent it's $40,000,000 whining and dining those with popular blogs to feed the Times content for next to nothing. Isn't the purpose of media the distribution of information? Free content also means greater retention of advertising dollars. A win win.
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The Huffington Post is having a field day with this.
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3D
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logical
If they were charged 40 mill for that POS, man, somebody must have seen them coming!
It's just like in my silly little city. There are no ideas, but they're all fired up about making money by ticketing cars that aren't illegally parked. That's their method of getting some free money. Much easier than actually being creative.
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can we stop using the 40 million number
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Re: can we stop using the 40 million number
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Re: can we stop using the 40 million number
Perhaps the news that The Times paywall has been doing better and better every month is what sent Masnick off the deep end.
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Re: Re: can we stop using the 40 million number
Does time travel faster when you have a paywall? It's been out for two weeks in Canada and less than a week worldwide.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/opinion/l18times.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=paywall& amp;st=cse
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Re: Re: Re: can we stop using the 40 million number
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110330/03151513693/news-corp-claims-79000-subscribers-to- its-paywall-times.shtml
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Serious Answer
The Times might have invested in planning and then implementing a vision of the newsmedium of the future - or at least of the next generation.
The first step of this is research. Since I haven't invested in that research, I can only guess what the outcomes would be. Here are some suggestions based on my guesses.
1. Everyblock is a great example of what a newsmedium quilted together based on geography might look like. Everyblock is limited in its data sources, presents little news, and poorly supports community interaction. However, the core of a true nationwide repository of information organized by street address is compelling. The Times could take this basic architecture, add to it geocoded reporting (either their own, or through partnership, the reporting of many others), leverage more and better geocoded databases, and build a true interactive social community around these news and data items. Such an integrated whole would be compelling. There is little in this that plays to the Times brand or core competencies (in fact I see it as a better project for Gannett), but it is one way the times might have invested that would have a greater long term payback.
Note that I haven't directly addressed revenue model for this. Several models (advertising, subscription for value added features, a "groupon-like" sales model all might play a role.) The basic idea here is the value proposition is inherent online and mostly new.
2. The Times could go the route of Zite or Flipboard and present views of the news totally customized to the individual. While Z and F are limited to repurposing other org's RSS feeds to provide content to the user; here both the Times' brand and high quality original content (plus its ability to negotiate content trade with other high quality publications) enables them to produce a compelling product. It could still contain RSS feeds, Facebook, Tweets, etc. But the news content would set it apart.
They would need to develop a compelling interface (Zite's is great, but could still be improved upon). Forty million can buy lots of good UX work. The interface could support display advertising, but advertising could also be individualized as well.
Anyway, those are two ideas to move the discussion forward.
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Follow the (copyrighted?) tradition
?
Profit !!!
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How Else Could The NY Times Have Spent $40 Million?
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First, you have rent. Although this is part of the the NYT group, each department and each project has to pay for the space it uses. So if they took even a dozen cubes and common office space, and write that over say a 3 year period, you have already spent some money.
Now, hire the people, give them benefits, computers, legal software (no piracy here), buy the cubicles, etc... again, figure it runs about 3 years maybe more.
Then look at the conversion systems. That means going back over a whole bunch of content and systems to make sure that everything is compatible and properly serving the pages. It is also likely a good time to upgrade some of the servers and networking, perhaps to impliment IPV6 into the internal network, etc. Remember, there is no data that has to share on the fly between multiple servers, plenty of work to do there.
...and so on.
The only reason you freak out on 40 million is likely because you have never done a large scale project while attempting to maintain the current systems in place, and to convert invisibly over time.
There is plenty to do, while amounts may have been charged to this project, there are likely benefits to other parts of the organization.
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Apr 1st, 2011 @ 2:14pm
Also, why would they convert anything when the only change is an overlay? Please stick to topics you understand and don't create bad excuses for bad decisions...
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Re: (Not so) easily spent
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Re: Re: (Not so) easily spent
Most importantly, we don't know if, example, they entirely redid their network, upgraded servers, changed data centers, created a CDN, or any other numbers of things.
We also don't know how the company applies costs. Example, do they push a percentage of the "content creation" expense of running the newspaper onto the online edition?
40 million for some Java just doesn't add up in the slightest. My feeling is that it is one of those big numbers, taken out of context by the haters, and pumped up to falsely make them look like idiots. Mike is pretty good at that sort of thing.
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Trust me, there is no way in hell "rent" is included in the cost here. It's easy to dismiss your comments when you make statements like this that show you know nothing about budgeting or finance.
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Even if it were, suggesting that it took a dozen people three years to come up with a paywall that is extremely confusing and basically doesn't work isn't exactly a compelling defense of the NYT. I'm a programmer, and I've written stuff that works better than that in (a lot) less time and with smaller teams.
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$40 Million
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Server farms!
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$40 million dollars
(Or maybe you meant hexadecimal 40.)
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