Why Does The NY Times Rely So Often On Single Anecdote Trend Pieces Not Supported By The Data?

from the trend-pieces dept

A few months ago, we pointed to a NY Times "trend piece" on people so hooked on their gadgets that they get distracted. As we noted, the entire piece seemed to be based around a single anecdote of a guy who got distracted, and some scientific studies that don't actually support the underlying thesis of the article. I've noticed that this formula is all too common in NY Times tech trend pieces. We saw it more recently in the NY Times piece we wrote about claiming that cable TV was winning against the internet by purposely keeping authorized content offline, based off of a single anecdote of a guy who ditched his cable subscription only to go back a year later... just a day or so before the stats came out showing that people are actually ditching their cable connections.

It appears that others are catching on to this rather questionable form of "reporting" by the NY Times. Jack Shafer over at Slate is calling the NY Times out for a similar piece which was so ridiculous that the article itself contradicts the central thesis:

In the 11^th paragraph of its Page One, Aug. 22 story about how technology--cell phones, GPS devices, satellite-location devices, and even video cameras--tends to get visitors to the national parks into trouble, the New York Times confesses the inherent bogusity of its premise, stating:

The National Park Service does not keep track of what percentage of its search and rescue missions, which have been climbing for the last five years and topped 3,500 in 2009, are technology related. But in an effort to home in on "contributing factors" to park accidents, the service recently felt compelled to add "inattention to surroundings" to more old-fashioned causes like "darkness" and "animals." [Emphasis added.]

Yet the newspaper persists in advancing its techno-made-the-visitors-get-in-trouble thesis, headlining the piece "For Parkgoers Pushing Luck, Technology and Trouble Got Together" in print and "Technology Leads More Park Visitors Into Trouble" online.

Shafer goes on to look at the details beyond the anecdotes and claimed single stat "climbing for the last five years" and finds that the NY Times' report is misleading at best:

Not precisely. The numbers, provided to me by the NPS, have been bouncing up and down. In 2004, the NPS conducted 3,216 search-and-rescue operations. In 2005, the number went down to 2,430 operations. In 2006, it rose to 3,623 operations. In 2007, it declined to 3,593 operations, and in 2008 declined again to 3,481. In 2009, the number rose to 3,593. Search-and-rescue operations conducted between 1992 and 2009 actually peaked at 5,761 in 1998, according to the NPS. Over that same period, the average number of annual search-and-rescue missions was 4,027, which means that the figure the Times ended up ballyhooing ("topped 3,500") is below the 18-year average.

In other words, there has been no dramatic increase in the number of NPS search-and-rescue operations in the era of the mobile phone, the satellite phone, GPS, and the emergency beacon. Technology isn't leading more park visitors into trouble.

So, given that we've now seen this happen multiple times, perhaps we can pen a "trend piece" about how the NY Times writes its trends pieces based on a few anecdotes, contrary to what the data actually says. They're really making a strong case for why we should pay up to access the site once that paywall goes up in a few months, right?

Filed Under: anecdotes, data, trend pieces
Companies: ny times

NY Times Tests A Paywall With A Regional Paper

from the and-what-will-they-learn dept

Last year, the NY Times announced plans to implement a paywall in 2011. We're not entirely sure what they've been working on over the year between the announcement and the actual implementation (as many of the "leaked" details seemed to contradict other comments), but apparently the company is quietly testing a paywall on a separate local newspaper, the Telegram & Gazette in Worcester, MA. The idea is to hide certain local content behind the paywall -- which will charge a whopping $14.95 per month to access. Now, looking around, it certainly does appear that the Telegram & Gazette is really the only major news source in Worcester (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't find anything else significant). However, with various local news operations springing up all over the place, it certainly seems like it could make sense for one of them to quickly target Worcester and get a nice jump in traffic.

Filed Under: journalism, paywall
Companies: ny times, telegram & gazette

Journalism Neutrality Now! Why The Government Needs To Oversee The NY Times' Editorial Neutrality

from the bizarro-world dept

We've tried debunking the ridiculous concept of "search neutrality" a few times now. It's an invention by a few telcos who were upset that Google was supporting net neutrality rules (something I don't support). So they came up with this concept of "search neutrality" to get back at Google. But, of course, the situations are entirely different. The reason why people believe in net neutrality is because your ISP controls what you can do online. You don't have a choice. When it comes to search, not only do you have the ability to make an instant choice, but the whole point of a search engine is to "rank" results based on what it thinks is best. You can't be "neutral" because a "neutral" search is just a unranked list of links that may or may not have anything to do with what you're searching for.

But, it appears the editorial folks over at the NY Times have gotten confused by all of this, and are saying that the government should step in and ensure that Google's algorithm is "fair":

Still, the potential impact of Google's algorithm on the Internet economy is such that it is worth exploring ways to ensure that the editorial policy guiding Google's tweaks is solely intended to improve the quality of the results and not to help Google's other businesses.

Some early suggestions for how to accomplish this include having Google explain with some specified level of detail the editorial policy that guides its tweaks. Another would be to give some government commission the power to look at those tweaks.

It's difficult to think of anything more ridiculous than a news publication calling for the government to step in and review the editorial guidelines of another company. So, just as the the telcos did with Google, why not flip this around, and make the same point about the NY Times. Here's my attempt:

The potential impact of the NY Times' coverage on the world/economy/war/etc. is such that it is worth exploring ways to ensure that the editorial policy guiding the NY Times' coverage choices is solely intended to improve the quality of the world, and not to help the NY Times' or other businesses.

Some early suggestions for how to accomplish this include having the NY Times explain with some specified level of detail the editorial policy that guides its front page choices. Another would be to give some government commission the power to look at those guidelines.

How would the NY Times (or pretty much any journalist) react to that? My guess is not too kindly.

Danny Sullivan, it appears, had a similar idea and rewrote the entire NY Times article as if it were talking about the NY Times (rather than just the two paragraphs I did here). He then goes into detail on why the whole thing is bunk.

Search engines are very similar to newspapers. They have unpaid "organic" listings, where usually (though not always), a computer algorithm decides which pages should rank tops. The exact method isn't important. What's important is that those unpaid listed are the search engines' editorial content, content it has solely decided should appear based on its editorial judgment.

Search engine also have paid listings, advertisements, which aren't supposed to influence what happens on the editorial side of the house. We even have FTC guidelines ensuring proper labeling of ads and intended to protect against "advertorials" in search results.

It's a church-and-state divide with good search engines, just as it is with good newspapers.

What the New York Times has suggested is that the government should oversee the editorial judgment of a search engine. Suffice to say, the editorial staff of the New York Times would scream bloody murder if anyone suggested government oversight of its own editorial process. First it would yell that it has no bias, so oversight is unnecessary. Next it would yell even more loudly that the First Amendment of the US Constitution protects it from such US government interference.

He also points out why Google is significantly more transparent than the NY Times about its own editorial policy:

Still, shouldn't Google share more about how it creates its algorithm? Compared to the New York Times, Google's a model of transparency. Consider:

• Google will list EVERY site that applies for "coverage" unlike the New York Times, which regularly ignores potential stories
• If Google blocks a site for violating its guidelines, it alerts many of them. The New York Times alerts no one
• Google provides an entire Google Webmaster Central area with tools and tips to encourage people to show up better in Google; the New York Times offers nothing even remotely similar
• Google constantly speaks at search marketing and other events to answer questions about how they list sites and how to improve coverage; I'm pretty sure the New York Times devotes far less effort in this area
• Google is constantly giving interviews about its algorithm, such as this one in February, along with providing regular videos about its process (here's one from April) or blogging about important changes, such as when site speed was introduced as a factor earlier this year.

There's a lot more in Sullivan's piece that basically debunks pretty much every myth that people (beyond just the NY Times) are making out to be an issue about Google's "neutrality" in search. Hopefully this silly concept goes away, but I fear there are too many lobbying dollars invested in it, that folks like Sullivan are going to have plenty of opportunities to re-debunk this concept in the future.

Filed Under: editorial, journalism neutrality, neutrality, oversight, search neutrality
Companies: google, ny times

Newspapers To Court: We Don't Care About TheFlyOnTheWall, But Please Don't Take Away Our Hot News

from the they-will-regret-this dept

Yesterday we wrote about Google and Twitter's amicus brief in the infamous FlyOnTheWall hot news case, and the folks over at the Associated Press were kind enough to send over a link to the amicus brief from a huge coalition of newspapers. Basically, every big US newspaper or newspaper organization signed on to this one, including the Associated Press, AFP, the NY Times, the Washington Post, Gannett, McClatchy, Belo, Scripps, Time, and the Newspaper Association of America (just to catch everyone else). Considering that the AP has been leading the charge to bring back hot news, you can probably guess where this one is going: The short summary? "We don't care about TheFlyOnTheWall or Barclays or this specific case, but we're scared to death that you might make a ruling that says the hot news doctrine should go away."

I'm still sort of amazed that any serious news organization supports the hot news doctrine, because it's almost guaranteed to come back and bite them if it is regularly used again. All of the newspapers above rely on rewriting news from other publications to some extent, whether they admit it or not. If they really support this, they're going to run into trouble themselves, even if they're apparently unwilling to admit it. It's incredibly short-sighted.

Also weird is the claim that these newspapers "rely" on hot news today. They don't. Sure, the hot news doctrine has technically been around for about a century, but it's barely been used at all in the last few decades. It was, for all intents and purposes, a dead doctrine that many considered not worth keeping around (pdf). To claim that these organizations have relied on the hot news doctrine is ridiculous, because it's barely been showing up in court until recently.

Either way, it looks like lots of parties who are concerned about "hot news" have realized that TheFlyOnTheWall case has become ground zero for whether or not "hot news" is actually allowed.

Filed Under: hot news
Companies: afp, ap, belo, gannett, mcclatchy, naa, ny times, scripps, theflyonthewall, time, washington post

NY Times Becomes A Trademark Bully Over A Logo For A Newspaper That Hasn't Existed In 40+ Years

from the all-the-bullying-that's-fit-to-print dept

What is it with the NY Times lately? The newspaper used to have actually been one of the more "reasonable" ones when it came to intellectual property issues. However, in just the last few weeks we've had stories about how it tried to takedown an RSS feed reader for using the NY Times' own RSS feed, as well as a story where the NY Times' chief IP lawyer hides behind copyright law to explain the NYT's refusal to post useful source documents.

However, this latest one may the most bizarre of all. From 1924 to 1966 there was a daily newspaper published in NY called the NY Herald Tribune. It shut down in 1966, with a brief attempt at revival under a different name. In 1967, the NY Times and the Washington Post bought the European Edition of the paper, which was known as the International Herald Tribune, which had a separate website until recently when the NY Times (who bought out The Washington Post's half of the paper a few years back) decided to merge the IHT website into the NYT's own.

Either way, even with the operation of the IHT, the New York Herald Tribune has not actually been a newspaper since 1966. However, apparently many people have fond memories of the masthead of the paper, in part because of how it was portrayed on the t-shirt of actress Jean Seberg in the 1960 French film Breathless. Popular clothing shop Neighborhoodies recently decided to recreate the t-shirt on their own (photo from Consumerist): That's when the NY Times got upset. It first threatened to sue over the use of the logo, but Neighborhoodies didn't fold. They, properly, realized that trademarks only cover use in commerce and for products that the mark actually covers. Seeing that the New York Herald Tribune has not operated since 1966 (and the NY Times only owned the brand after that), it's difficult to see how the NYTimes has a legitimate trademark request.

And here's where things get even more ridiculous. After Neighborhoodies made this position clear to the NY Times, the NY Times tried to route around the company and sent a takedown to the ISP who hosts Neighborhoodies' website. That ISP apparently didn't want to stand up for its customer, so Neighborhoodies quickly switched ISPs. Either way this seems like an entirely bogus trademark claim, topped off with an obnoxious attempt to route around the company once that company made it clear that it wasn't going to just fold over when the NY Times sent a nastygram.

Filed Under: ny herald tribune, t-shirts, takedowns, trademark
Companies: neighborhoodies, ny times

How The NY Times Hides Behind Copyright Law To Hoard Information And Weaken Its Journalism

from the too-bad dept

In the past couple of years, I've tried to be a lot more diligent about putting up primary documents when discussing them in relevant posts. Many of you have certainly noticed the DocStoc or Scribd embeds that I frequently use. This was after talking it over with a few people, who pointed out that giving readers the actual source material was a lot more useful (and after a few snarky "dissenters" suggested that I was "hiding" the real details). I've actually found that it's worked out quite well, with the comments around the actual documents often quite enlightening and informative. These days, I actually get annoyed when I read reports about a lawsuit or some other type of document and the document itself is not available. It makes it that much harder to actually build a real discussion around the topic.

So why is it that so many major news sources don't post source documents?

Felix Salmon has a long and interesting post about his discussion with the NY Times on this particular topic. Two really interesting points come out of this, neither of which is good:

1. Many (though, certainly not all) old school journalists come from an era in which they want to hoard the information, and dribble it out, because that's how journalism used to be. The power was in those who held the information, and the journalist's role was to just give you what s/he felt you needed, rather than giving you the full download to analyze yourself.
2. The NY Times and others then uses copyright law as a crutch to explain why they don't provide source material. They hide behind copyright law, claiming that it opens up too much liability to post certain documents that may be covered by copyright.

The first of these looks bads for those journalists, and speaks to how they haven't realized how the world has changed, and how their role has changed. The second shows how much copyright law can actively stifle real journalism, by limiting what a reporter can do in providing useful information to the public.

The one big thing I learned from talking to Samson is that when NYT journalists talk about copyright constraints preventing them from putting documents online, they're not particularly upset about that. In fact, they might secretly be quite happy that there's no question of posting the document they spent so much effort obtaining. Journalists are human, after all, and can be quite jealous and competitive: they don't want to simply give the story, on a plate, to their competitors, and will happily sit on documents rather than publishing them if they're given half a chance to do so. Samson said he couldn't think of a single instance where a journalist was begging him to be able to publish something and he said no, for copyright reasons.

After all, it's easy for the NYT to post copyrighted documents if it's so inclined -- it just needs to send them to any one of dozens of organizations who will happily put them online, and then link or embed the document into the story. Or the journalist can just ask their source to go ahead and post the document online, in some anonymous place where it can be linked to or embedded. But that never seems to happen. And even when there's no copyright at all, as in the case of the Hank Paulson ethics waiver, the NYT went on the record as saying that the reporters "would probably be uncomfortable simply handing over documents" even to one of their colleagues, let alone to the world in general. After all, said Tim O'Brien, an editor there, "they had spent a lot of time and energy to find, analyze, and report on" that document.

This is a rather antiquated view of the information economy these days. It's a view built on the idea that hoarding information is better than sharing it. In our own experience, that seems to create less valuable results, and for a publication like the NY Times, it seems like a huge waste. No one is saying that giving away the source material takes away from the actual reporting or commentary that happens on top of that. In fact, most people will still find that to be the most valuable part. But sharing the actual source material is an important part of the package.

The other chilling part of Salmon's conversation with Samson was one of his rationale's for hiding behind copyright:

"We want our readers to respect intellectual property," says Samson. "Intellectual property is arguably the biggest asset of this company. We value others' IP rights, and we want their IP rights to be respected."

No, your IP is not your biggest asset. The readers and the community you've built up is -- and if you treat them badly by hoarding information, they might start to go elsewhere. Hiding behind copyright law to provide less valuable reporting is a cheap cop out, that doesn't befit a news organization of the NY Times' stature.

Filed Under: copyright, journalism, sources
Companies: ny times

NY Times Confused About Its Own RSS Feed; Orders Takedown Of iPad RSS Reader

from the let-me-explain-the-internet-to-you dept

A whole bunch of you are sending in the bizarre news that the NY Times has sent a takedown for a popular iPad RSS reader because (*gasp*) it offers the NY Times' own RSS feed. Amusingly, this app was praised by the NY Times itself in a review just last week. It was also praised by Steve Jobs in his keynote at WWDC yesterday. As Wired notes, the details of the takedown request suggest that the NY Times is unfamiliar with the basics of both RSS and the web.

Basically, this app is your standard everyday RSS reader, the same sort of RSS reader that has been available all over the place for years. It's using the NY Times official RSS feed, because the NY Times put it out there. For the NY Times to then complain about it doing so is bizarre:

The Pulse News Reader app, makes commercial use of the NYTimes.com and Boston.com RSS feeds, in violation of their Terms of Use*. Thus, the use of our content is unlicensed. The app also frames the NYTimes.com and Boston.com websites in violation of their respective Terms of Use.

I'm guessing their concern is with the fact that the RSS reader is a paid app. This likely this goes back to an issue I raised more than five years ago, about companies who were putting "non-commercial" licenses on their RSS feed. How do you determine what's "non-commercial" in RSS? If I use that RSS feed as a part of my job, is that commercial? If I use it in a fee-based app, is that commercial? Either way, it's hard to see how this is really commercial use in any way. Yes, the RSS app is a fee-based app, but it's not "selling" the NY Times' content. It's just letting anyone access the free content that the NY Times put out for just this purpose. It's selling the software. In the same way Dell or HP or whoever sells a computer and lets people "access" the NY Times website.

This is actually pretty surprising. While the NY Times is pursuing a brain-dead paywall strategy, it had seemed like that was mostly upper management's doing. The Times' has pretty good tech folks who have done some neat things, and I've heard their General Counsel speak about copyright issues, and he has always seemed pretty on top of things (i.e., recognized the value of fair use and worried about excessively locked down copyright).

Filed Under: ipad, pulse, rss readers, takedowns
Companies: ny times

NYTimes' Boss Pretends That A Paywall Creates A Stronger Emotional Bond

from the you-got-that-backwards dept

We're still surprised that the folks at the NY Times think that a paywall is a smart idea -- especially since they already tried the idea and it failed pretty miserably. But, lately, it seems like they're completely making stuff up to make themselves believe it's a good idea. At the company's annual meeting, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. tried to convince everyone (including himself, we're guessing) that by putting up a paywall, you increase the emotional connection readers have with the site -- to which Jeff Jarvis noted, that "emotional connection" is probably anger.

At the core of our thinking is the necessity of increasing engagement. This is about having our users generally spend more of their valuable time with us, either on our site or on other sites that are integrating our content. It is about enhancing the emotional connection that our users have with us.

We start off with the premise that the key to increasing engagement is about compelling storytelling. This transcends technology --- it is not about the printing press, or the server, or the cave drawing, for that matter. It is about an essential human connection, and we are working hard to explore this notion and enhance our relationship with our audiences worldwide.

The real issue is that Sulzberger seems to have the relationship backwards. Charging doesn't create an emotional relationship. What we've been pointing out over and over again is that you have to build the relationship first, and then on top of that you can charge for providing scarce value. The obvious response, of course, is that many people already do have an emotional connection with the NY Times, but you don't increase that by charging for the content that helped build that connection. That weakens the connection. The connection is what makes people willing to buy. Buying doesn't build a stronger connection by itself.

Filed Under: paywall
Companies: ny times

Has the New York Times Run Afoul of the FTC's Endorsement Guides?

from the ethics,-ethics dept

Terry Heaton and Jeff Jarvis have commented recently on the conflicts of interest implicated by the adulatory coverage of the iPad in the New York Times and other media companies. They point first to the expectation that widespread adoption of the iPad will foster consumer adoption of a platform where media giants can show their content for a fee — thus enabling them to move more easily to a paywall revenue model.

Dan Gillmor shares these concerns, but notes an even more concrete conflict of interest — Apple’s advertising of the iPad consistently features a screenshot of the New York Times app, including of course the Times’ logo. Although Apple no doubt hopes to show that its device can be used to read the Times, surely attractive content to many of its target consumers, the image is also terrific advertising for the New York Times. Gillmor indicates that he has no doubt that Times’ reviewers truly believe the contents of their swooning coverage of the iPad, but argues that the benefit that the Times is receiving is a conflict of interest that ought to be overtly acknowledged and discussed by Times management. Yet, he reports, nobody from the Times has been willing to respond to his questions about the issue, such as whether the Times has received any compensation for the display of its logo on the iPad as shown in the ads. Gillmor raised these concerns a week ago, and the Times has yet to address publicly the possible conflict.

One may well wonder whether Apple or the Times has violated the Federal Trade Commission’s Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising. The placement of the Times’ logo in Apple’s ads is surely a thing of great value, and readers of the Times’ reviews might well want to take the provision of free advertising to the Times into account in deciding whether to give full credence to the objectivity of the Times’ news reports and reviews of the product. The benefit of having such advertising could well be a “material connection” that has to be disclosed both by Apple and by the Times under section 255.5 of the FTC Guides, as illustrated by Example 7.

Surely, what’s good for bloggers who praise products ought to be good for the New York Times and professional journalists.

Filed Under: apple, endorsements, ftc, ipad
Companies: ny times

NY Times Execs Think People Will Pay $20 To $30 Per Month For The iPad Edition Of The NY Times

from the let-me-introduce-you-to-newsday dept

Wow. Doesn't the NY Times have some of the world's most famous and accomplished economists writing for them at times? You would think that, at some point, as they tried to figure out business model ideas, they would think to actually run some of these ideas by an economist. We've already explained why the NYT's decision to put up a paywall makes little sense from an economic standpoint, but now it's getting even worse. You see, there are still some folks who bizarrely believe that tablet computers -- or, really, just Apple's iPad -- represent the savior for journalism because suddenly people will pay for apps. Already, this suggests a rather tragic misunderstanding of the economics of apps, but apparently it's even worse than that.

Rumors are flying that there's a battle within the NY Times on how to price their app for the iPad. Those on the newspaper side of the house apparently believe that it should be priced at $20 to $30/month to avoid cannibalizing the print product. By the way, if you want a simple tip for how to fail at business, it's to make a decision to avoid cannibalizing your own business. When you do, you've just made it clear that a competitor is going to cannibalize your business for you. The folks on the interactive side of the house think that $10/month makes a lot more sense and believe that pricing it at the $20 to $30 range is suicidal. Of course, if you thought that the management at the NYT's was really crafty, you might believe that this whole story was floated to reset the anchor price, though I have trouble believing that's true.

The problem, of course, is that the NY Times is pricing based not just on trying not to cannibalize the physical product, but without regards to basic economics, and the fact that everyone knows that without a physical product, the costs of the paper actually go down. Yes, of course the costs of all the reporting and editing remain -- no one is denying that. But you no longer have the printing and delivery costs, which are substantial. And reasonable people would expect that, at the very least, the cost of the app will reflect that. Either that, or (more likely), they'll realize that other, more well managed news providers will step in and offer up news for free in order to get the market share that the NY Times once had.

Oh, and one final word for the NY Times. I recognize that you're a better paper, with a much better reputation, than your neighboring competitor, Newsday, but remember what happened when Newsday tried to charge $20+ per month for access to its digital version? It got a grand total of 35 people to sign up. I'm sure more would sign up for a NY Times' app, but how many more?

Filed Under: ipad, paid content, paywalls, pricing, subscirptions
Companies: ny times