New York Times Lays Out "Last Man Standing" Strategy For Survival

In a conference call with analysts late last month, Janet L. Robinson, the president and chief executive of The New York Times Company, laid out a vision of how the company would survive the downturn that is crippling the newspaper industry.

"As other newspapers cut back on international and national coverage, or cease operations, we believe there will be opportunities for The Times to fill that void," she said, for both readers and advertisers.

But before it can execute what the industry regards as a "last-man-standing" strategy, the company has to get there first.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[Daniboy]

Go farther Left NYT's-you don't need those right and middle of the road readers-you only need Lib readers!

[Hardbull]

How strange that most of the comments here are about something they don't like about coverage in the NY Times, while completely missing the point about how newspapers are self-destructing before our eyes. It's obvious the NY Times will survive as the "last man standing." It already has national distribution and is where people will turn when other once-great papers (like the LA Times) cut their way into irrelevance. The NYT and its new building are going nowhere. But many of the desperately needed local papers (and their websites) in cities across the nation will begin disappearing soon, and along with them will go any coverage of your local city hall, local congressmen, state politics, school boards, local environmental crimes, development, crime, etc. Yes, some bloggers will keep watching their particular pet peeves, but none will have the staff and resources to act as true watchdogs.

[blowhard]

the ny times will go the way of the dinosaur. they are irrelevant. all they do is critique without offering any useable solutions.

[discourse jockey]

I feel your pain, I really do. But it's not a newspaper's job to offer solutions for anything. They are supposed to inform accurately, and to give us the feeling of being adequately informed (compare Faux News, who succeed only at the latter).

[Freenation]

Best strategy for NYTIMES and other US MM is to start reporting news which is 'real' and not cooked up...specially regarding Middle East...People are smarter now and they know what is 'real' Vs 'cooked'...for starters NYTIMES can clean it's op-ed writers by kicking out more people like Kristol who are nothing but paid hacks...

[KnippRS]

Ooohh, I see. You bury in the story that this is a race with lots of participants, and Palin's hubby may or may not win! Pretty shoddy reportage, and your bias is blatant!

[Roll451]

Said to my shock, you're on the wrong block. Go follow some other silhouette.

[Choicelady]

All newspapers should consider selling out to the employees and eliminating stockholders who suck the life out of the paper. There are two ways to run a business economically - push labor down or eliminate the shareholders. The latter distributes the income to those who spend it locally, and it makes for a much better paper. Employee-owned businesses are among the MOST profitable. Shareholders are leeches - they take money but give nothing back after the initial public offering. Employee ownership keep the paper vital. If we extol "the ownership society" in a really meaningful way, this is a serious and useful alternative to keep the news, well, news.

[SeconLine]

I love the way they stop you from reading by making you register.

...and they wonder why they are losing money.

They lost me (and I'm a Manhattan resident) with the Judith Miller debacle.

[jsomerville5]

They lost me with their holier-than-thou attitude; their jacked up prices and the way they write only for an upper middle class white audience with two homes...

They have no idea how the rest of the world lives.

[LeonBNJ]

The NY Times has lost a lot of it's now former readers for a variety of reasons including it's support of Bush's war in Iraq, to the various reporter scandals, to higher vendor and subscription prices, 'bias' both liberal and conservative, declining ad revenue and too much debt (like from it's new office building). To make things worse over the years the overall quality of reporting and commentary seems to have sharply declined and like other newspapers, are badly losing to free internet news.
Perhaps they could become like USA Today, with basic news and opinion and for a national audience, charge for their internet content beyond basic articles and cut the street price.

[VikingQuest]

My last straw was after that fake front page story about a McCain affair . . . no follow up story . . . no other papers ran with it . . .

Any High School paper wouldn't have run with that story and I don't even like John McCain but showed me that they cannot be trusted as a news source.

[ImpalaSuperSport]

Hey NYT, don't let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya.

[Horst]

I used to subscribe to the Times....but no longer. The reporting is biased - nothing wrong with that but they deny it- and unfortunately boring. The writing in the Economist or Guardian is much better by far. Columnists like Maureen Dowd sound tired and formulaic,etc, etc.

[Jamesdean]

Both The Economists and the Guardian are way, way better.

[whoknew---]

At least the NYT has diversified and it sounds they are doing whatever they can to survive...

Perhaps the NYT should look at how the European newspapers are surviving and take some tips from that....

[larry278]

1/2 puffery & 1/2 bad news or maybe 3/4 bad news & 1/4 puffery. What are the odds that the NYT folds in June, July, Aug or lasts into 2010?

[Topper23]

Grey Lady down.

[Virgil Kane]

Newspapers no longer stand a chance in the age of the internet.

[steamboat]

You are partially correct........The other part is people want real news, impartial news, and not slanted liberal propaganda.

[meemu]

After all the right-wing propaganda, it's a RELIEF to read a little liberal slanted news!!!!

And really how can you complain, when the right-wing has polluted the news and airwaves and TV for so long? lol

[murderBYzeN]

maybe the times should try printing actual news instead of democratic party propaganda?

[Topper23]

NYT is owned by the DNC.