week 15 - You don’t have to act like a newspaper on the net Peter Preston

In some ways the New York Times is the BBC of print journalism: dominant, revered, imperious, sometimes bathed in irritating self-congratulation. 

But it is also, inevitably, an obsessively observed leader in the hideously difficult business of moving from newsprint to digital screen. If the Times can make it, perhaps others can. If the Times fails, then newspaper companies everywhere can start to despair.Which makes its latest health check (from an officially appointed team of its own journalists) seem very important. Three years ago, a first “innovation” team report plumped for digital integration and chose subscriptions – paywalls rather than advertising free-for-alls – as the chosen survival route. Now “Our Path Forward” marches ambitiously down that road.

But such success isn’t enough, apparently. Transitions never go fast or far enough – unless of course they go too far, too fast. The danger down this trail is a relentlessly balanced tour of Cake-and-Eat-It territory. “We need to reduce the dominant role that the print newspaper still plays in our organisation and rhythms, while making the print paper even better.”

Brothers and sisters, that’s pure self-delusion. Print is a meal prepared to a set deadline, emerging from ovens at a magic moment. Digital is a constantly changing 24-hour buffet. Make print assemble its menu from that buffet and, inevitably, there’s a weakening of focus. Not fatal perhaps, but not offering something “even better”.

And, indeed, the most interesting chunks of Times future shock come at the interstices where standard print wisdom needs radical rethinking. “Our largely print-centric strategy, while highly successful, has kept us from building a sufficiently successful digital presence and attracting new audiences for our features content …