Today's NYTimes sports front

I really like it.


Of course, there was a time that outside back would've been chock full of ads.

 

I might have liked it had the story not been already posted online -- and featured prominently -- about 6 days ago. I read the piece so long ago that it no longer caught my eye.

The NYT has been doing a lot of that lately: filling the paper with week-old re-runs. Normally, they would only post pieces online about 24 hours before the print run. But now the stories sit online forever, and when the hard copy comes several days later, half the content is stale fish. It's totally insulting to anyone who pays $$$ for the paper. (Home delivery includes access to the NYT online so it's impossible not to notice.)

 

The overlap between the products is minimal, I reckon.

 

wicked is correct. the overlap is very small.

the article was published online on thursday, three days, not six, before people read it in the sunday print edition, and just two days before it otherwise would've appeared online. now, since online readership -- especially saturdays -- takes a huge dip, it makes little sense to hold your major enterprise for the weekend. the nyt innovation report made it very clear that we have to go to our readers where they are and WHEN they are there. not expect them to come to us because we say so.

 

Even four days online (Thursday to Sunday) is an eternal shelf life on a daily newspaper's website.

If the NYT was planning a funky layout for the hard-copy that was intended to create a buzz, then why not put the enterprise piece online AFTER it runs in the paper? Or tease it online on Thursday, and run it online after the weekend on the day that the innovation report says there would be the most eyeballs?

Dean Potter died May 16. By mid-June, there was hardly any urgency to piece anyway.

 

Yeah, I don't think it's a big deal. The audiences are mostly different, and I see it all the time with my local paper. If I read something online, then see it in the paper a day or two later, so what? I just shrug and move on.

 

Yeah, well, if they had published it in print the same day it went online, readers would see something else in that space later, and maybe they wouldn't shrug and move on because of stale content. And maybe others would come back for more.

 

Maybe I'm just so used to it now. And I certainly don't spend as much time reading the paper as I used to, since I've already read some of the stuff online.

 

I thought the exact same thing. I certainly understand why they did it that way, but I don't see it screwing things up too badly if you do it the other way. You're supposed to pull out anyway, so it's pretty awkward. If this was 1A I wouldn't want to have that in the rack, but on an inside section, you could easily start the type on the left as long as the page flag is still there to indicate the section. The photo really does make the design.

 

Yes, the publication of online copy is, occasionally, moving away from the day/night before it appears in print. It's not really an experiment so much as a reflection on wanting to keep the site (especially mobile) fresh with interesting content, regardless of its eventual print home.

 

I don't have a problem with them starting the type like they did because people will see the cover first and then open it and see the spread. It makes sense when they first see it for the story to start there. Plus, no one is going to hold open a two-page spread to read it. They'll open it, say, "Wow, cool photo and layout," and then close it and read the front, flip it and read the back, so having it go left to right the whole spread is unnecessary.