NY Times eliminating almost all its “blogs”
“… as we’ve matured, the sections themselves now act like blogs”
As The Times continues to change – becoming more digital, becoming more global, looking for new ways to make money as print advertising declines – it frequently adds new features or puts more emphasis on established ones, like video….
I wrote a few months ago about one such decision I strongly disagreed with: the elimination of the Green blog, which had served as a useful clearinghouse for good information, aggregation and fresh reporting about the environment.
At that time, Dean Baquet, the managing editor, told me that The Times would be examining many of its blogs and deciding which ones to maintain. He explained it as a matter of allocating resources and changing with the times.
Now, some of those decisions have been made. In addition to the Green blog, Media Decoder and The Choice (about getting into and financing college) have disappeared. Dozens of Times blogs remain, but more will be eliminated, as Joe Pompeo of Capital New York reported this week. He wrote that “a decision has been made to pull the plug on most, if not all of The Times’s sports blogs, which include Bats (baseball), Straight Sets (tennis), Slap Shot (hockey), The Rail (horse racing) and Off the Dribble (basketball), although each of those appeared to still be publishing content at this writing.”
I asked Mr. Baquet to explain what’s behind the recent changes and those that are to come. While not confirming precisely which blogs will be eliminated, he confirmed the general trend.
“We are rethinking blogs – actually, we’re always rethinking them,” he said.
He suggested that the golden age of blogs at The Times may be over: “Blogs proliferated early on because they were seen as a way for desks and subjects to get into the Web game. They taught us a different way of writing and thinking, created a way to move fast on coverage. But I’d argue that as we’ve matured, the sections themselves now act like blogs.”
Who even knew The Times had “blogs”?
What’s a “blog” anyway?
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Comments
Ditto —> Who even knew The Times had “blogs”?
This is the way the NY Times euphemistically announces coming layoffs.
They’re not eliminating blogs. They’re eliminating content duplication. Some of the best stuff at the Times is found on blogs, like the Lede.
Are they eliminating The Lede? I think its true value in letting us know how leftist the Times is. Robert Mackey is one of the most dishonest bloggers I’ve read. Yes, he shows stuff you don’t have elsewhere, but his spin is disgraceful.
I have a buddy who works in the NY Times’s digital boiler room, where they are reworking the company’s end-product, digitally speaking. Even stuff everyone knows will never hit print is being funneled through the “Desk Editor Approved” bottleneck. He also says Nate Silver is rebelling against the idea that anyone has authority to edit his content, and was allegedly told, “Read your contract.”
Somebody still reads the ny times?
I’m waiting for the headline “NY Times eliminating NY Times.”
There is a New Dork Times???????
Who Knew, or reads it?!?
Nobody who is any body certainly!
I thought from their reeking smell that they had died several decades ago – say like in 1970.
Snark Snark (for the humor impaired!!!)
Hopefully, we will soon see the NY Times eliminate its newspaper and go the route of Newsweek as a virtual periodical, with 3 readers.