When I was in San Francisco for ONA, a kind reader offered a blunt critique of my reporting: “You know, every time The New York Times sneezes, it isn’t news.”
On Monday, The New York Times Web chiefs held a meeting about the future of nytimes.com.
The idea that people won’t pay for content online has become such a part of the Web orthodoxy that New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller risked getting lynched earlier this month for merely musing about paid models for the online editions of his paper. But some successful paid sites hint that free content need not be the model the media are forever stuck with.
We’ve finally reached the point at which some of the finest minds doing the biggest thinking about the battered news business believe the best eraser for red ink is… charity. Financial pros David Swensen, the chief investment officer at Yale, and his colleague Michael Schmidt posit that the best way to save journalism is to go the nonprofit route, funded by endowments. But is it?
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