Eat The Press

Is Jon Stewart Right, Or Are The NYT Videos Any Good?

Nick Douglas |  Posted Friday January 26, 2007 at 06:06 AM

John Stewart lampooned New York Times videos on Tuesday's Daily Show, playing some real snorers from the vows and classified sections. His point: NYT chose the worst stuff to put on video. That idea should scare the Times, which presumably started web-only features like video to attract the younger audience that is abandoning print news for the web.

But is Stewart playing fair? The videos featured on the Times front page feel as interesting and well-written as its stories and provide a value add. Granted, since the videos are locked onto the site, they're at a disadvantage against embeddable videos from YouTube. (An embedding solution could still involve ads, as with videos at Revver and Blip.tv.) The public-television style could distinguish Times videos in a sea of amateur content and overslicked TV clips.

Stewart makes another point with a mockup of Art Buchwald's video obit on an undignified ad-filled page. That's actually one advantage the Times has over YouTube, thanks to the paper's high-quality advertisers. But to stay relevant in online video, the Times will have to balance between its low-key thought pieces and high-profile stunts like video obits (which we're sure will seem perfectly normal in a few years).

(Ed. Best part by far: The bike ad. Awesome.)