Abramson out as NYT editor, Baquet replaces her

If the information you're highlighting is incorrect, it doesn't matter what font you use. It's still wrong. The Politico piece is a joke. I wasn't commenting on your statement, but rather what it was based on. I'll say that anyone who reads the 97-page report and isn't trying to write something controversial, will not come away with the idea that The Times is being told to abandon "the great news and insight that is at the heart of the Times brand." Hell, Warsh had to make it only to the fifth graf to read, "Our core mission remains producing the world's best journalism."

 

Ok, describing the report as a "clarion call to blow up the 163-year-old business" is a huge stretch. In fact, it appears to contain a few useful nuggets of tactical insight into best practices in the digital world. But, overall, the report reads like a steaming pile of marketing-speak bullshit that would scare the crap out of anyone with respect for journalism and the NY Times' brand. It's obsessed with a handful of successful new media brands and even more disturbingly proposes increased business-side involvement with the newsroom.

 

Well, I'm not scared by it. What does scare me is the status quo.

As for increased business-side involvement with the newsroom, the report calls for working with "reader-focused departments" on the business side. It does not talk about getting into bed with advertising. The newsroom often works with the business side in getting the trucks out on time, getting papers in the driveway at a particular time, while -- we hope -- still getting the key news in print. What we're talking about now is still circulation.

Since I've been coming to this site, people have been blasting publishers for failing to adapt to the changing world. And yet, when a company has a serious discussion on the matter, it's parsed and ripped, often out of context. I know we're a cynical bunch, but geeeeeez.

Maybe this is a more fair appraisal: http://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisperry/2014/05/21/why-we-reacted-so-strongly-to-the-new-york-times-innovation-report/

 

My impression was that it was a resume-padding exercise to make it look like Gregg's actually accomplished something when he's inevitably promoted.

 

It's not like publishers have given the rest of us much confidence that they wil do the right thing when it comes to changing and evolving.

There's no reason why a newspaper should have to sacrifice its principles on keeping news and advertising separate. Yet, many publishers, as it has been documented on here numerous times, seem to either don't have a clue, or don't care.

Publishers should be more adaptable. But to do that requires money and resources, which they may not be willing to devote. Throwing out a bunch of ideas at the wall and hoping they stick isn't a strategy. It's flailing, which is why they deserve criticism.

 

One more piece from Auletta:

According to two close friends of hers, she has not been reading newspaper accounts or watching television reports about her departure from the Times. She wanted, friends say, to remain upbeat for a graduation speech she was giving, last Monday, at Wake Forest, and didn’t want to be consumed by her own anger and sense of loss. She grew up in a household in which the Times was a kind of secular religion and an authority; to achieve the editorship and then to lose it was an enormous and disorienting blow. As she told the students at Wake Forest, the job had been “the honor of my life.”

After the speech, a friend told her that Sulzberger had publicly criticized her management style, and that the Times had put out word that she was not honest with the publisher when she insisted that she had told Baquet about the job offer to Gibson. The friend says that Abramson responded as if she’d been in a cave. “Arthur wouldn’t do that,” she said.

nyr.kr/1lP8p0Z

 

Score one for YankeeFan -- Baquet is going to start tweeting:

http://ajr.org/2014/06/05/nyt-executive-editor-plans-start-tweeting-soon/

 

Scoreboard!

I home he posts pictures of the holes he punches in the wall.

 

"MT? What the fuck does MT mean?!"

 

Not sure what's more ridiculous - that it appears to be newsworthy that "he plans to start tweeting soon," whatever soon means, or that many thousands of sheep have already been lined up for who knows how long, awaiting that first golden utterance.

 

Get off my lawn!

 

He tweeted!