Even though New Media barkers like myself have been predicting the downfall of Heritage Media for some time now, the news is no doubt going to be shocking to the public at large.
Not long ago, back in July or so, Duncan Riley wrote over at the Inquisitr that of all the failing Heritage Media formats, he saw the TV format hitting the crapper first. He wrote with a number of compelling reasons that I didn't necessarily see as invalid, but after considering all the various trends felt the conclusion was in slight need of adjustment:
Wise newspaper publications are managing some sort of a transition to an online revenue, but most companies that have their base in serialized news in the printed form still have problems adjusting to the new formats that we in the blogging business take for granted.
Duncan is very positive that newspapers will always go the distance because of the need for quality journalism. Unfortunately (at least for the newspaper industry) I don’t see this as a particularly convincing argument. Quality journalism can and does take place outside of newsprint, and for a much greater profit. Some traditional text journalism outfits may realize this and make the transition. Most won’t.
I hafta say, when I was making the prognostication, I wasn't thinking specifically of the New York Times. After all, they've made significant investments into technology, have recently made themselves a real presence and participant in the blogosphere.
The problem remains, though, that they have a very top-heavy editorial structure, and need to make strategic cutbacks that will allow them to maintain the same editorial output without so much overhead. We talked about this on one of the last Mashable Conversations episodes that Sean and I put out.
As we said in that episode:
This is a year in which newsprint looks far more likely to collapse than we've ever seen before. Meanwhile, top-tier blogs continue to prosper and find their niche as virtual magazines. Traditional media magazines seem to see the writing on the wall and are looking to meet New Media halfway.
I don't think that the New York Times is un-savable, but I think that the print edition and the print-based business model is dead. If you need proof that a transition can be made, simply look to the tons of online-only publications that well into the black (like the one you're now reading).
Clearly, the New York Times isn't hurting for online traffic, and they're a very monetizable brand. Very simply, they're going to need to look at ways of producing the same type of content for less money. This likely means some segregation of the publication from it's very top heavy corporate structure and a lot of their extraneous business units (like the Boston Red Sox) from the actual publication.